The Gamer's Dilemma challenges us to find a distinction between virtual murder and virtual pedophilia. Without such a distinction, we are forced to conclude that either both are morally acceptable or that both should be morally illicit. This paper argues that the best way to solve the dilemma is, in one sense, to dissolve it. The Gamer's Dilemma rests on a misunderstanding in the sense that it does not distinguish between the form of a simulation and its (...) surface content. A greater appreciation of the way structural features of a simulation affect subject experience will help us see why only simulations of murder and pedophilia generating virtually real experiences are likely to be seen as wrong. I argue that a simulation’s structural elements powerfully affect how subjects experience simulated content and hence is an important, and previously neglected, variable necessary to dissolve the Gamer's Dilemma. Properly understood, virtually real simulations of murder and pedophilia are both likely to be treated by players as morally wrong. Similarly, virtually unreal murder and pedophilia will be less likely to be judged as wrong. Subject judgments are thus consistent once a simulation’s structural variables are accounted for. The Gamer's Dilemma dissolves as a dilemma once we acknowledge these structural features of simulations and how they affect experience and moral judgment. (shrink)

The gamer’s dilemma :31–36, 2009) asks whether any ethical features distinguish virtual pedophilia, which is generally considered impermissible, from virtual murder, which is generally considered permissible. If not, this equivalence seems to force one of two conclusions: either both virtual pedophilia and virtual murder are permissible, or both virtual pedophilia and virtual murder are impermissible. In this article, I attempt, first, to explain the psychological basis of the dilemma. I argue that (...) the two different action types picked out by “virtual pedophilia” and “virtual murder” set very different expectations for their token instantiations that systematically bias judgments of permissibility. In particular, the proscription of virtual pedophilia rests on intuitions about immoral desire, sexual violations, and a schematization of a powerful adult offending against an innocent child. I go on to argue that these differences between virtual pedophilia and virtual murder may be ethically relevant. Precisely because virtual pedophilia is normally aversive in a way that virtual murder is not, we plausibly expect virtual pedophilia to invite abnormal and immorally desirous forms of engagement. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative essay, Christopher Bartel attempts to resolve the gamer’s dilemma. The dilemma, formulated by Morgan Luck, goes as follows: there is no principled distinction between virtual murder and virtual pedophilia. So, we’ll have to give up either our intuition that virtual murder is morally permissible—seemingly leaving us over-moralizing our gameplay—or our intuition that acts of virtual pedophilia are morally troubling—seemingly leaving us under-moralizing our game play. Bartel’s attempted resolution relies on (...) establishing the following three theses: (1) virtual pedophilia is child pornography, (2) the consumption of child pornography is morally wrong, and (3) virtual murder is not murder. Relying on Michael Rea’s definition of pornography, I argue that we should reject thesis one, but since Bartel’s moral argument in thesis two does not actually rely thesis one that his resolution is not thereby undermined. Still, even if we grant that there are adequate resources internal to Bartel’s account to technically resolve the gamer’s dilemma his reasoning is still unsatisfying. This is so because Bartel follows Neil Levy in arguing that virtual pedophilia is wrong because it harms women. While I grant Levy’s account, I argue that this is the wrong kind of reason to resolve the gamer’s dilemma because it is indirect. What we want is to know what is wrong with virtual child pornography itself. Finally, I suggest alternate moral resources for resolving the gamer’s dilemma that are direct in a way that Bartel’s resources are not. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a particular amoralist challenge against those who would morally criticize our single-player video play, viz., “come on, it’s only a game!” The amoralist challenge with which I engage gains strength from two facts: the activities to which the amoralist lays claim are only those that do not involve interactions with other rational or sentient creatures, and the amoralist concedes that there may be extrinsic, consequentialist considerations that support legitimate moral criticisms. I argue that the amoralist (...) is mistaken and that there are non-consequentialist resources for morally evaluating our single-player game play. On my view, some video games contain details that anyone who has a proper understanding of and is properly sensitive to features of a shared moral reality will see as having an incorrigible social meaning that targets groups of individuals, e.g., women and minorities. I offer arguments to support the claim that there are such incorrigible social meanings and that they constrain the imaginative world so that challenges like “it’s only a game” lose their credibility. I also argue that our responses to such meanings bear on evaluations of our character, and in light of this fact video game designers have a duty to understand and work against the meanings of such imagery. (shrink)

This book provides cross-cultural ethical exploration of sex robots and their social impact. What are the implications of sex robots and related technological innovations for society and culture? How should we evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men or children? Critics argue that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons and a social degradation that will increase sexual violence, objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body images, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, (...) and pass on sexually transmitted disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human desire. They see sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography, as providing autonomy affirming companionship for the lonely and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. Some appreciate sex robots as a social evil, others as a positive good, and still others as a harmless pastime. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have significant implications for society and the future of human relations. This book is of great interest to researchers in bioethics, human sexual behavior, AI ethics, and philosophy of sex. (shrink)

This volume brings together a set of conceptual, moral, and cultural concerns carefully to assess a significant public policy issue: the development and proliferation of sex robots. Critics argue, for example, that sex robots present a clear risk to real persons as well as a degradation of society. They claim that the prevalence of sex robots will increase sexual violence, immorally objectify women, encourage pedophilia, reinforce negative body image stereotypes, increase forms of sexual dysfunction, and pass on sexually transmitted (...) disease. Proponents judge robotic sexual companionship as just another step in the exploration of human erotic desire. Sex robots, and similar technology, such as virtual reality pornography and other forms of “digi-sexuality,” are appreciated as providing autonomy affirming companionship, sexual release for the lonely, and a relatively harmless outlet for sexual fantasies that avoids the use of human prostitutes and thus reduces sexual victimization. As these chapters explore, to secure normative claims about sexual activity with artificial humanoids, one will need first to understand what the meaning of the morality of sexual activity can be as well as the significance of various practices with robotic partners on such cardinal social institutions as the family and the relationship between the sexes. One will also need to consider in terms of which ranking of human goods, right-making conditions, social outcomes, or personal virtues we ought to evaluate the significance of sexual relations with robots that look like women, men and children. Without such analysis, it will be unclear whether sex robots ought to be appreciated as a social evil that will further degrade moral culture, a positive technological innovation that will help preserve human dignity, or a more or less harmless pastime. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice, Disorder, Conduct, and CulpabilityStephen J. Morse (bio)Keywordsvice, conduct, culpability, mental disorderDr. John sadler’s interesting paper raises an important issue. It defines vice as criminal, wrongful or immoral behavior. He claims that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) “confounds the concepts of vice and mental illness” and that this confounding has “important implications... for the relationship between crime, criminality, wrongful conduct, and mental illness.” The paper (...) correctly notes that disorders for which vice is the primary criterion tend to be impoverished diagnostically and are probably less valid than non–vice-related disorders. Dr. Sadler wonders if the subjects of his case studies are “involved in sick behavior, immoral behavior, both, neither, or some other metaphysical kind altogether.” This is an excellent question that this comment will seek to clarify. It will also consider the moral and legal implications of the answer.The domain of immoral, wrongful, and criminal behavior is essentially action. Some moral and religious traditions evaluate the content of an agent’s thoughts, desires, and character, but the dominant view is that vice primarily describes action that is wrongful because it violates the rights of others or it is wrong in itself. The rules of morality and law create value, but their essential task is to guide the action of agents who must live together. Dr. Sadler does not explicitly recognize that the diagnostic criteria that are vice are all actions, and not simply abnormal perceptions, desires, thoughts, or moods. His three case studies of conduct disorder, factitious disorder, and paraphilia confirm this point. Even pedophilia, which can be diagnosed simply on the basis of urges or fantasies that cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty, would not be considered a vice unless the agent acted on these sexual urges. Those individual actions that meet Dr. Sadler’s criteria for vice I will term “vice actions.”Actions, including vice actions, may be evaluated medically and morally. There is no logical or conceptual reason why the same action cannot be both a sign of mental disorder and wrongful and potentially blameworthy. Actions can be just mad, just bad, or mad and bad. Also, the same action may sometimes be a sign of disorder and sometimes not. No general argument suggesting the contrary is provided. Consequently, there is no confound between the concepts of vice and mental disorder unless vice actions fail to satisfy the generic criteria for being a sign of mental disorder. Dr. Sadler seems to implicitly recognize [End Page 47] this when he asks whether vice–mental disorder relationship criteria are impoverished because there is a lack of consensus about “the minimum requirements for an acceptable set of descriptive criteria for a mental disorder category,” or when he asks “where criminal syndromes... fit into a classification of mental disorders.”No consensual, generic definition of mental disorder exists, and deciding whether actions should be signs of mental disorder is particularly fraught because cultural context and values always play a role in the definition of mental disorder. The other potential signs and symptoms of mental disorder are virtually all phenomena that simply happen to people and are not products of agency. Actions are by definition the product of agency, however, and vice actions affect by definition the rights and interests of others. The latter is true whether or not the agent is “vicious.” Even if an agent who has done wrong is excused, the rights of the victim have been violated.Moral, political, and legal evaluation is largely beside the point for non-action signs and symptoms, but it is always on point for vice actions. This is the primary potential source of the confound between vice and disorder. To claim that a vice action is a sign of disorder because it is vice begs the question and is indeed a confound. Even the presence of a biological marker will not save this claim. All human action presumably has biological markers and one cannot say that a marker is of a disorder without first having an independent definition of disorder that the vice action satisfies.Until a robust theory of mental disorder is provided, we cannot determine whether a vice action is... (shrink)

People in vulnerable positions who need support in their daily lives often face challenges in receiving timely access to care; for instance, due to disabilities or individual and situational vulnerabilities. There has been an increasing turn to technology-mediated ways to improve access to care, which has raised ethical questions about the appropriateness and inclusiveness of digitalising care requests. Specifically, for people in vulnerable positions, digitalisation is meant to facilitate requests for access to healthcare resources and to simplify the process of (...) navigating the healthcare system. In a multidisciplinary research project, we examined the use and value of a ‘sensitive’ virtual assistant that can accommodate different needs of target groups through inclusive design, adaptive technology and artificial intelligence. This paper presents empirical findings from focus groups with care recipients and caregivers about the sensitive virtual assistant and relates the findings to five larger ethical issues associated with the use of virtual assistants in healthcare settings and care practices more generally. It highlights the risk that, even with the inclusion of target groups in the design of digitalised care assistants, some people may benefit significantly less than others. (shrink)

This is the first book to present an aesthetics of virtual reality media. It situates virtual reality media in terms of the philosophy of the arts, comparing them to more familiar media such as painting, film and photography. When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality of virtual items and worlds, about the value of such things, and indeed, about how they may (...) reshape our understanding of the "real" world. Grant Tavinor finds that approach to be fundamentally mistaken, and that to really account for virtual reality, we must focus on the medium and its uses, and not the hypothetical and speculative instances that are typically the focus of earlier works. He also argues that much of the cultural and metaphysical hype around virtual reality is undeserved. But this does not mean that virtual reality is illusory or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is significant for the altogether different reason that it overturns much of our understanding of how representational media can function and what we can use them to achieve. The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of technology, metaphysics, and game studies. (shrink)

How do we assign values to virtual items, which include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In this article, I offer a framework for answering this question. After considering different value theses in the literature, I argue that whether we think these theses mutually exclusive or not turns on our view about the number of value-salient kinds virtual items belong to. Virtual monism is the view that virtual Xs belong to only one (...) value-salient kind in relation to X. Virtual pluralism is the view that they belong to more than one value-salient kind. I argue for two claims. First, virtual monism is mistaken. Minimally some virtual Xs are Xs, while others are not. Second, dualistic virtual pluralism is also mistaken because it is too coarse grained. Instead, I argue for fourfold pluralism: virtual items either represent an original's properties or reproduce essential properties and do so to lesser or greater extents. This gives us four value-salient kinds of virtual X: virtual reproductions, simulations, representations, and simulacra of X. I apply this view to various debates in the literature and conclude with a discussion of less basic hybrid kinds. (shrink)

Much of the excitement and concern with virtual reality (VR) has to do with the impact of virtual experiences on our moral conduct in the “real world”. VR technologies offer vivid simulations that may impact prosocial dispositions and abilities or emotions related to morality. Whereas some experiences could facilitate particular moral behaviors, VR could also inculcate bad moral habits or lead to the surreptitious development of nefarious moral traits. In this chapter, I offer an overview of the ethical (...) debate about using VR to improve morality. I start by clarifying the rationale of using VR for good, drawing on moral enhancement literature, branches of the science of morality, and the specific potentials of this technology. Then, I will briefly focus on three prominent domains of socio-moral improvement: the use of VR for enhancing empathy, reducing implicit biases, and improving pro-environmental behavior. After that, I shall consider three ethical objections to the enthusiasm for using VR in order to improve human morality. Finally, I will recapitulate the main points of the chapter and provide a few concluding thoughts on future avenues of discussion on how VR can make us act (morally) better. (shrink)

Agential moral enhancement refers to the improvement of a moral agent qua moral agent through the application of technology. Anda Zahiu et al. recently argue that virtual reality can support such enhancement by fostering perspective-taking and, in turn, extending empathic concern. In this paper, we build on their proposal by arguing that virtual reality simulations of problematic situations offer a particularly promising pathway to agential moral enhancement. We contend that expanding empathic concern is insufficient for improving moral agency, (...) as morally relevant situations are often characterized by uncertainty and conflicting interests, and empathic motivation alone may not be sufficiently durable. By contrast, we argue that to become morally better, an agent should refine moral beliefs, cultivate deliberative capacity, and develop moral character. Drawing on John Dewey’s theory of moral growth, we argue that exposure to problematic situations is crucial for facilitating these improvements. We further demonstrate that VR holds four distinct advantages over traditional media in simulating such situations and propose two design models for implementing virtual reality moral enhancement. We also examine our approach in light of potential risks and argue for implementation within professionally supervised and safeguarded contexts. (shrink)

A central debate in the philosophy of virtual reality (VR) focuses on the reality of virtual items. Broadly, there are two main disagreements. Some views accept a metaphysical orientation to VR, and disagree on the reality of virtual items. For instance, David Chalmers (Disputatio 9(46):309-352, 2017, Disputatio 11(55):453- 486, 2019, 2022) defends digitalism, the view that virtual items are real digital items. Neil McDonnell & Nathan Wildman (Disputatio 11(55):371-397, 2019), by contrast, defend fictionalism, which maintains that (...) virtual items are unreal fictions. Other views, like Grant Tavinor’s (2021), reject the metaphysical orientation, argu- ing that focusing on the reality of virtual items is a mistake. In what follows I evalu- ate these two disagreements. I argue that experiences of virtual items depend on episodes of picture perception. Recognizing this reveals that the current debates are either easily resolved in favor of one view, or are not disagreeing about the reality of virtual items, but about what virtual items are. (shrink)

Multi-user online environments involve millions of participants world-wide. In these online communities participants can use their online personas – avatars – to chat, fight, make friends, have sex, kill monsters and even get married. Unfortunately participants can also use their avatars to stalk, kill, sexually assault, steal from and torture each other. Despite attempts to minimise the likelihood of interpersonal virtual harm, programmers cannot remove all possibility of online deviant behaviour. Participants are often greatly distressed when their avatars are (...) harmed by other participants’ malicious actions, yet there is a tendency in the literature on this topic to dismiss such distress as evidence of too great an involvement in and identification with the online character. In this paper I argue that this dismissal of virtual harm is based on a set of false assumptions about the nature of avatar attachment and its relation to genuine moral harm. I argue that we cannot dismiss avatar attachment as morally insignificant without being forced to also dismiss other, more acceptable, forms of attachment such as attachment to possessions, people and cultural objects and communities. Arguments against according moral significance to virtual harm fail because they do not reflect participants’ and programmers’ experiences and expectations of virtual communities and they have the unintended consequence of failing to grant significance to attachments that we take for granted, morally speaking. Avatar attachment is expressive of identity and self-conception and should therefore be accorded the moral significance we give to real-life attachments that play a similar role. (shrink)

In this chapter, we ask three questions about pedophilia: Is it immoral to be a pedophile? Is it immoral for pedophiles to seek out sexual contact with children? Is it immoral for pedophiles to satisfy their sexual preferences by using computer-generated graphics, sex dolls, and/or sex robots that mimic children? We argue that it is not immoral to be a pedophile, it is immoral for pedophiles to seek out sexual contact with children because of the expected harm to children, (...) and it is morally permissible for pedophiles to satisfy their sexual preferences in ways that do not involve any real children. (shrink)

Research on music semantics has demonstrated the existence of a cognitive capacity to represent virtual sources of sounds, distinct from the capacity to represent sounds and sources of sounds. Our research explores a parallel phenomenon in the olfactory domain. The first contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that a smell can inform us about an entity — referred to as its virtual source — that is not causally tied to the characteristics of the smell. We exemplify two (...) types of virtual sources of smells: some deriving from representations of smellscapes, some from representations of odor sources. The second contribution is an explanation of some practices of perfumery that intend to shape mental representations elicited by perfume smells, through their temporal structures and their constituent notes. The third contribution is a comparison between key features of the capacities to represent virtual sources of music and of smells. Three of those features are shared by both capacities: (1) only some of the properties of the stimulus are interpreted; (2) musical pieces and smells have an extremely underspecified semantics; (3) inferences may be about objects that are not able to produce the stimulus. (shrink)

David Chalmers argues that virtual objects exist in the form of data structures that have causal powers. I argue that there is a large class of virtual objects that are social objects and that do not depend upon data structures for their existence. I also argue that data structures are themselves fundamentally social objects. Thus, virtual objects are fundamentally social objects.

David Chalmers argues that virtual reality is a genuine kind of reality. In one of its readings, this “virtual realism” states that virtual entities ontologically depend on real digital entities. This article explores that suggestion and offers a novel account of the dependence of the virtual on the digital. Drawing on Lynne Rudder Baker's theory of constitution, we contend that virtual objects should be seen as constituted by digital objects, when these are placed in certain (...) favourable circumstances. We explore the rationale and implications of this view, which we see as a promising form of virtual realism. (shrink)

Nozick famously argued that life inside an Experience Machine (EM) is dismal because it severs our connection to external reality. Would life spent in Virtual Reality (VR) be similarly dismal? Chalmers argues that because VR is importantly different from an EM, life in VR can be roughly as good as life outside. Chalmers further argues for Virtual Realism, the view that virtual worlds can be unqualifiedly real. I examine the relation between these claims about VR and the (...) idea that there’s special value in connecting to the external world. The EM itself, I argue, can only weakly support the value of such a connection. And VR, as understood by Chalmers, is different from the EM precisely by permitting us to retain extensive links to the non-virtual world. We can better test the value of a connection to external reality by considering a more restrictive version of VR. This narrower form of VR is, I argue, inferior to life outside in several ways. Some of my arguments for this also support the idea of a valuable connection with reality—but only if Virtual Realism is false. By contrast, and contrary to the impression given by Chalmers, Virtual Realism seems to make little difference to questions about the value of life in VR vs. life outside. (shrink)

This paper offers a philosophical and ethical critique of artificial intelligence (AI) and platform capitalism in virtual reality (VR) environments, examining how digital colonialism and algorithmic sovereignty reshape identity, agency, and justice in immersive lifeworlds. Drawing on political theory, decolonial scholarship, and digital phenomenology, the analysis traces three interrelated transformations. First, it examines how data colonialism operates within platforms such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds, where behavioral data extraction and algorithmic systems structure perception and interaction, producing forms of cognitive colonization (...) embedded in immersive experience. Second, it analyzes the rise of algorithmic sovereignty—exemplified by environments such as Decentraland—through which governance is exercised via privatized, often opaque infrastructures regulating participation, visibility, and cultural production. Third, it highlights resistance movements, including Indigenous-led initiatives such as Te Awa Tupua, which propose alternative models of immersive governance grounded in relationality, collective stewardship, and epistemic plurality.Across these transformations, the paper develops the concept of immersive justice as a normative framework for evaluating and redesigning immersive environments. It examines the ethical implications of immersive technologies, including algorithmic asymmetries, ecological costs, and the transformation of interaction through avatars and synthetic agents. Engaging cyberfeminist and virtue ethics perspectives, the analysis shows how immersive systems can reinforce extractive logics or support more inclusive, participatory, and sustainable forms of collective life. The paper argues that immersive environments must be governed as shared infrastructures of experience, embedding accountability, plurality, and responsibility within their design and operation. (shrink)

This article explores four major areas of moral concern regarding virtual reality technologies. First, VR poses potential mental health risks, including Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder. Second, VR technology raises serious concerns related to personal neglect of users’ own actual bodies and real physical environments. Third, VR technologies may be used to record personal data which could be deployed in ways that threaten personal privacy and present a danger related to manipulation of users’ beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. Finally, there are other moral (...) and social risks associated with the way VR blurs the distinction between the real and illusory. These concerns regarding VR naturally raise questions about public policy. The article makes several recommendations for legal regulations of VR that together address each of the above concerns. It is argued that these regulations would not seriously threaten personal liberty but rather would protect and enhance the autonomy of VR consumers. (shrink)

The rapid evolution of information, communication and entertainment technologies will transform the lives of citizens and ultimately transform society. This paper focuses on ethical issues associated with the likely convergence of virtual realities and social networks, hereafter VRSNs. We examine a scenario in which a significant segment of the world’s population has a presence in a VRSN. Given the pace of technological development and the popularity of these new forms of social interaction, this scenario is plausible. However, it brings (...) with it ethical problems. Two central ethical issues are addressed: those of privacy and those of autonomy. VRSNs pose threats to both privacy and autonomy. The threats to privacy can be broadly categorized as threats to informational privacy, threats to physical privacy, and threats to associational privacy. Each of these threats is further subdivided. The threats to autonomy can be broadly categorized as threats to freedom, to knowledge and to authenticity. Again, these three threats are divided into subcategories. Having categorized the main threats posed by VRSNs, a number of recommendations are provided so that policy-makers, developers, and users can make the best possible use of VRSNs. (shrink)

This chapter explores the evolving landscape of influencer marketing with the advance of virtual influencers—AI-powered, computer-generated characters designed to emulate human influencers. As traditional advertising faces growing consumer skepticism, social media influencers have emerged as compelling alternatives, with electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) playing a central role in shaping consumer behavior. Recently, virtual influencers have garnered attention for their ability to engage audiences, offering brands unprecedented control and consistency in their messaging. However, concerns around their authenticity, credibility, and ethical use (...) remain prevalent. Drawing on empirical research, this chapter investigates how virtual influencers are perceived by social media users, with a specific focus on parasocial interactions and source credibility. Using in-depth interviews analyzed through thematic analysis, the study identifies key factors that make virtual influencers persuasive, including physical and social similarity to the target audience, engaging content, and interactive behaviors. While respondents acknowledge their appeal—especially in contexts such as technology promotion—virtual influencers are seen as less credible than human influencers when promoting products they cannot physically use. Nonetheless, credibility can be enhanced through third-party validation and relevant, high-quality content. The findings highlight that while virtual influencers hold promise, their persuasive power is highly context-dependent and currently falls short of human influencers in terms of perceived authenticity and trustworthiness. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the potential for virtual influencers to gain traction as technology improves and audience expectations evolve. (shrink)

Understanding how people behave when facing hazardous situations, how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the risk taking (RT) decision making process and to what extent it is possible to modify their reactions externally, are questions that have long interested academics and society in general. In the spheres of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), the military, finance and sociology, this topic has multidisciplinary implications because we all constantly face risk taking situations. Researchers have hitherto assessed risk taking profiles by conducting questionnaires (...) prior to and after the presentation of stimuli; however, this can lead to the production of biased, non-realistic, risk taking profiles. This is due to the reflexive nature of choosing an answer in a questionnaire, which is remote from the reactive, emotional and impulsive decision making processes inherent to real, risky situations. One way to address this question is to exploit VR capabilities to generate immersive environments that recreate realistic seeming but simulated hazardous situations. We propose VR as the next-generation tool to study risk taking processes, taking advantage of the big four families of metrics which can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity: the real-world risks approach (high presence VR environments triggering real-world reactions), embodied interactions (more natural interactions eliciting natural behaviours), stealth assessment (unnoticed real-time assessments offering efficient behavioural metrics) and physiological real-time measurement (physiological signals avoiding subjective bias). Additionally, VR can provide an invaluable tool, after the assessment phase, to train in skills related to risk taking due to its transferability to real-world situations. (shrink)

In “The Virtual and the Real,” David Chalmers argues that there is an epistemic and ontological parity between VR and ordinary reality. My argument here is that, whatever the plausibility of these claims, they provide no basis for supposing that there is a similar parity of value. Careful reflection upon certain aspects of the transition that individuals make from interacting with real-world, physical environments to interacting with VR provides a basis for thinking that, to the extent that there are (...) good reasons to deny the reality of virtual objects, there are also reasons to place a correspondingly higher value upon the experience of interacting with a VR environment. Chalmers’ assumption to the contrary arises from a subtle misrepresentation of how the phenomenon of cognitive penetration works in the perception of virtual objects, and from an unwillingness to acknowledge how our attitudes toward virtual environments are conditioned by the values we adopt when engaged in gameplay. (shrink)

In marine science, VR technologies are being used to model underwater space and enable virtual geoscience fieldtrips for teaching and research. The vast potential in adapting these technologies alongside their speedy application suggests challenges in relation to the standardization of these technologies and what forms of representation come to matter in these contexts. This raises the question regarding how the use of VR technologies produce and transfer knowledge about marine environments. To address this question, I explore VR technologies as (...) tools for mediating human-ocean relations, analyzing processes and technologies used in marine science to produce VR models and digital environments of oceanic spaces that give meaning to the marine. Doing so, I argue that VR technologies flatten the vast materiality of the oceans to create an illusion of depth that is anchored in the “objectivity” of the visual. Additionally, VR oceans currently represent a shift from other representations of the oceans as global or planetary, as they are being used to assist the production of local, place-based engagements of the seas, specifically through positionality and spatial awareness (aka proprioception), which differs from previous representations of the sea based on sight. (shrink)

In online multiplayer games, players sometimes engage in “griefing”—deliberately harassing others without advancing any in-game objective. This paper argues that such virtual malice is morally wrong. Through philosophical analysis and empirical research, I argue that griefing causes real psychological distress for players, bridging the gap between virtual actions and real-world harm. A well-known World of Warcraft case—the “Serenity Now” funeral raid—illustrates the practice of griefing and its emotional impact on a gaming community. Applying multiple ethical frameworks (utilitarianism, Kantian (...) ethics, virtue ethics, and social contract theory) confirms that griefing is ethically indefensible under each. This convergence underscores that even in games, deliberately harming others for its own sake violates basic moral standards. (shrink)

An emerging line of research in bioethics questions whether enhanced love is less significant or valuable than otherwise, where "enhanced love" generally refers to cases where drugs (e.g., oxytocin, etc.) are relied on to maintain romantic relationships. Separate from these debates is a recent body of literature on the philosophy and psychology of "Virtual Reality (VR) dating," where romantic relationships are developed and sustained in a way that is mediated by VR. Interestingly, these discussions have proceeded largely independently from (...) each other. This article considers whether and to what extent philosophical arguments leveled against the value of enhanced love in the pharmacological case extend to cases where loving relationships are technologically mediated via VR rather than pharmacologically mediated. It will be argued that, while some worries about the pharmacological case do not extend over in a way that will be particularly problematic for VR, two (of the four arguments considered) are more prima facie serious. I conclude by suggesting why even these stronger argument strategies are not insurmountable and, thus, that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that VR-mediated love can largely withstand variations on the bioconservative critiques that target pharmacologically enhanced love. (shrink)

In 2009 Dutch judges convicted several minors for theft of virtual items in the virtual worlds of online multiplayer computer games. From a legal point of view these convictions gave rise to the question whether virtual items should count as “objects” that can be “stolen” under criminal law. This legal question has both an ontological and a moral component. The question whether or not virtual items count as “objects” that can be “stolen” is an ontological question. (...) The question whether or not they should count as such under criminal law is of a moral nature. The purpose of this paper is to answer both the ontological question and the moral question underlying the legal question. (shrink)

This book provides a philosophical analysis of adult-child sex and pedophilia. The sex intuitively strikes many people, including myself, as sick, disgusting, and wrong. The problem is that it is not clear whether these judgments are justified and whether they are aesthetic or moral. By analogy, many people find it disgusting to view images of obese people having sex, but it is hard to see what is morally undesirable about such sex. Here the judgment is aesthetic. This book looks (...) at the moral status of such adult-child sex. In particular, it explores whether those who engage in adult-child sex have a disease, act wrongly, or are vicious. In addition, it looks at how the law should respond to such sex given the above analyses. (shrink)

Extended reality devices provide users with unprecedented immersive and hybrid perceptual experiences, and users will act their bodies according to the information perceived. This shows that visual perception plays a crucial role in the formation and shaping of self-perception and spatial position. Users have a strong perceptual experience of their physical presence and self-perception in the real world as a result of their avatar perspective based on visual perception in a virtual hybrid environment, as is issued by Chalmers in (...) his "Mirror Argument". However, users can still clearly differentiate their self and spatial experience between virtual and reality. To refute Chalmers' argument regarding perceptual experience in virtual reality, this article proposes a thought experiment called "Mary's Room in the Virtual Reality World" based on the experimental evidence of neuroscience. Finally, a possible future solution to this dilemma is presented. (shrink)

In this paper I will propose that Fichte’s systematization of transcendental philosophy could give a strong input to the philosophy of information. In particular I would like to give a Fichtean reading of the notion of virtual information that Luciano Floridi and Marcello D’Agostino introduced in the literature and which was in turn expressly based on a suggestion originally proposed by Hintikka. I will offer a genesis of the concept of virtual information and in doing so I will (...) make use of the idea firstly introduced by Kant and then developed by Fichte, that theoretical reason is based upon practical reason; I will show how the latter is involved in our reasoning at a very elementary stage; eventually I will argue that Fichte’s explanation of the ‘ought to’ (Soll) in and its impact on our consciousness explains how we can access so-called virtual information. (shrink)

Traditionally, spiritual exploration has been a self-focused endeavor, whether done alone or with a community, to inquire into who one is and how they can experience more profound meaning in life, find their life purpose, and, for some, grow closer to God. In the current moment, however, there appears to be a growing movement toward spiritual exploration in small groups of people engaged in a type of circle practice called sacred circles. Access to sacred circles, particularly virtual ones, became (...) commonplace during the pandemic. Research on small groups conducted virtually revealed that through an intentional process, group members can indeed feel connected to one another and a larger reality. The findings from my research indicate that participation in virtual sacred circles may be a growing venue for seekers who wish to awaken in community while also combating the increasing tide of loneliness we are encountering in the West. This chapter applies the study of small groups and its findings to the increasingly popular form of spiritual exploration I call virtual sacred circles and posits the importance of this type of group phenomenon in spiritual exploration and development and in expanding how we conceive of sacred spaces. (shrink)

This study dives into the world of incorporating virtual reality (VR) into online learning environments with the goal of thoroughly examining its uses, obstacles and possible advantages. Through a survey it explores how VR intersects, with learning by reviewing essential concepts, core principles and various applications of VR in educational contexts. The research methodology includes a review of literature and categorization based on learning tasks and feedback mechanisms drawing insights from 24 research articles released between 2017 and 2024. The (...) study classifies VR integration in learning into three groups; VR Enhanced Online Learning with Full Feedback VR Based Online Learning with Limited Feedback and VR Driven Online Learning without Feedback. Each category delves into experiences, components and experiential learning to provide valuable perspectives for educators, scholars and professionals. It also explores trends, unresolved issues and potential future research avenues, in integrating VR into learning such as advanced VR technologies, teaching strategies improvement user experience enhancements and scalability considerations. It concludes by encouraging stakeholders to harness the power of VR to redefine learning experiences in the digital era. (shrink)

The impressive development of electronic communication techniques has given rise to virtual communities. The nature of these computer-mediated communities has been the subject of much recent debate. Are they ordinary social groups in electronic form, or are they fundamentally different from traditional communities? Understanding virtual communities seems a prerequisite for the design of better communication systems. To clarify this debate, we will resort to the classical sociological distinction between small traditional communities (based on personal relations) and modern social (...) groups (bound by looser, more impersonal links). We will argue that the discussion about virtual communities is often vitiated by a simplistic assimilation to traditional communities, whereas they may be in fact quite different and much more impersonal. Virtual communities are often bound by reference to common objects or goals, and not by personal relations. In this respect, virtual communities are just another example of a long-term evolution of modern society toward more abstract social relationships. (shrink)

When racism persists without efforts to mitigate its negative impacts, it can lead to racial trauma. The Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) framework, experienced in person, is a powerful and reliable way to mitigate the harmful effects of racism. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the potential of virtual environments. Relying on the TRHT framework, Virtual Healing Experiences (VHE) are facilitated in virtual spaces using a video conferencing platform for community members to process and heal through restorative (...) storytelling. Virtual Healing Experiences were used by the community of Kalamazoo, Michigan, for racial healing. This chapter explores the critical elements of VHE, participants’ experiences, and the potential of VHE to sustain racial healing in communities, creating a safe, accessible, and sacred space offering reassurance and confidence in forging a path forward. This chapter illustrates how virtual spaces such as VHE can be made sacred by including key practices, such as Touchstones and virtual meeting etiquette, to maintain space where individuals can be vulnerable as they reflect and share their personal stories in order to heal. (shrink)

Attempts to use virtual reality technology in the treatment of depression have yielded disappointing results, lacking foundational theoretical principles. In this article, we aim to provide the theoretical foundation and guidelines for the principled use of virtual reality in cognitive behavioral therapy treatments for depression. We leverage the active inference framework, a neuroscientific theory grounded in probabilistic belief updating and action, to furnish us with an understanding of action and learning as uncertainty minimization. This approach through active inference (...) is well justified, as recent work in active inference has provided models of both depression itself, and of the mechanisms underpinning the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy. In short, we argue that the aim of virtually assisted cognitive behavioral therapy should be to introduce a degree of flexibility into an individual’s action-based world models. Where depression is characterized on the computational level by overly rigid beliefs, we can use the curation of virtual affordances to disrupt its characterizing patterns, primarily through curating affordances that maximize the learning rate in relation to desired outcomes. (shrink)

La realidad virtual ofrece múltiples beneficios. Desde el punto de vista milleano se destacan dos beneficios. Uno de ellos es poner a disposición de más individuos las fuentes de los placeres superiores y otro el de ofrecer un catálogo más amplio de formas de vida. En algunos entornos virtuales es posible tener experiencias reales virtuales. Para esas situaciones algunos autores han propuesto el Principio de equivalencia. Mi propósito en este texto es ofrecer una lectura consecuencialista de este principio, respetando (...) la libertad de los individuos con las únicas limitaciones establecidas por Mill en el Principio del daño. (shrink)

From the early 1990s when the EZLN (the Zapatistas), led by Subcommandte Marcos, first made use of the Internet to the late 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Trade and Investment and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social protest movements were emergent. These new movements seemed diffuse and unstructured, yet at the same time, they forged unlikely coalitions of labor, environmentalists, feminists, peace, and global social (...) justice activists collectively critical of the adversities of neoliberal globalization and its associated militarism. Moreover, the rapid emergence and worldwide proliferation of these movements, organized and coordinated through the Internet, raised a number of questions that require rethinking social movement theory. Specifically, the electronic networks that made contemporary globalization possible also led to the emergence of “virtual public spheres” and, in turn, “Internetworked Social Movements.” Social movement theory has typically focused on local structures, leadership, recruitment, political opportunities, and strategies from framing issues to orchestrating protests. While this tradition still offers valuable insights, we need to examine unique aspects of globalization that prompt such mobilizations, as well as their democratic methods of participatory organization and clever use of electronic media. Moreover, their emancipatory interests become obscured by the “objective” methods of social science whose “neutrality” belies a tacit assent to the status quo. It will be argued that the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory offers a multi-level, multi-disciplinary approach that considers the role of literacy and media in fostering modernist bourgeois movements as well as anti-modernist fascist movements. This theoretical tradition offers a contemporary framework in which legitimacy crises are discussed and participants arrive at consensual truth claims; in this process, new forms of empowered, activist identities are fostered and negotiated that impel cyberactivism. (shrink)

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, Dogecoin, cryptobros, stablecoin, the Disaster Girl NFT—recent years have seen the emergence and growth of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens, which have generated enormous wealth for a select few but left many people both puzzled and intrigued. In May of 2022, Madonna announced her collaboration with Beeple, the digital artist whose collection of images was paired with an NFT that sold for $69 million in cryptocurrency at a Christie’s auction (their first NFT sale) in 2021. Their (...) collaboration is one of the many partnerships springing up between celebrities and the world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, with crypto boosters such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, Tom Brady, and other highly visible celebrities participating in paid endorsements for these digital assets or merely signaling the worth of these assets via personal purchase. The relationship between these celebrities and influencers and the crypto industry, as marketing scholars and advertisers point out, is a risky one, due to the speculative and volatile nature of these new forms of currency. This chapter examines the rhetorical dynamics driving the rise and fall of virtual currency and the impact of celebrity culture and branding on crypto campaigns. (shrink)

This chapter examines the similarities and differences between physical, psychological and virtual realities, and challenges some conventional, implicitly dualist assumptions about how these relate to each other. Virtual realities are not easily understood in either dualist or materialist reductive terms, as they exemplify the reflexive nature of perception. The chapter summarises some of the evidence for this “reflexive model”—and examines some of its consequences for the “hard” problem of consciousness. The chapter then goes on to consider how these (...) realities might relate to some grounding reality or thing-itself, and considers some of the personal and social consequences of becoming increasingly immersed in virtual realities. Although this chapter was published in 1998 and develops work published in 1990, it presents a form of “radical externalism” that anticipates many themes in current (2006) internalism versus externalism debates about the nature of mind. It is also relevant to an understanding of virtual reality “presence.”. (shrink)

The subject of the study is virtual art museums in Russia and China as a form of digital cultural transformation and a new model for representing artistic heritage. The object of the study is virtual art museums as a specific form of contemporary digital cultural communication, in which the museum institution, the work of art, models of viewer perception, and national cultural memory are reconfigured. The author examines in detail the virtual projects of the Russian Museum and (...) the digital museum practices of Shanghai, including online exhibitions, virtual tours, multimedia formats, digital halls, and museum broadcasting platforms. Particular attention is paid to how the Russian and Chinese models of the virtual art museum organize the digital representation of art in different ways: the former is primarily oriented toward the preservation and educational dissemination of the national artistic canon, whereas the latter is associated with the actualization of heritage, urban identity, and the visual modernization of the contemporary cultural image. The methodological basis of the study consists of cultural analysis, the comparative method, the institutional approach, as well as elements of visual analysis and the analysis of cultural representation in digital museum forms. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that virtual art museums in Russia and China are examined not as technically similar digital resources, but as culturally distinct models of artistic representation. The Russian model is interpreted as an educational and archival form of preserving the national artistic canon, historical continuity, and institutional memory. The Shanghai model is revealed as a representative and modernization-oriented form of actualizing artistic heritage through urban identity, visual culture, media communication, and the digital event. As a result, it is established that the virtual museum does not replace the traditional art museum, but creates an additional level of its cultural functioning. It expands access to art and forms new educational and communicative opportunities, while simultaneously changing the depth of aesthetic perception and weakening direct contact with the original. The significance of the study lies in clarifying the cultural understanding of the virtual museum as a form of cultural modeling, in which each national museum system organizes memory, visuality, and forms of viewer interaction in the digital environment in its own way. (shrink)

This paper analyzes in the use of virtual reality when used to induce full-body ownership in violent offenders in order to elicit empathetic feelings by allowing them to embody the virtual body of a victim of domestic abuse. The authors explore potentially harmful effects to individuals participating in this kind of therapy and question whether consent is fully informed. The paper concludes with guidelines for ethical research and rehabilitation using this innovative technology.

A common understanding of the role of a game developer includes establishing (or at least partially establishing) what is interactively and perceptually available in (video)game environments: what elements and behaviors those worlds include and allow, and what is – instead – left out of their ‘possibility horizon’. The term ‘possibility horizon’ references the Ancient Greek origin of the term ‘horizon’, ὄρος (oros), which denotes a frontier – a spatial limit. On this etymological foundation, ‘horizon’ is used here to indicate the (...) spatial and operational boundaries that a (video)game environment affords its players. This book chapter discusses a particular feeling that emerge in relation to playful encounters with the ‘possibility horizons’ of videogames. I am referring here to the realization, as a player, that a game environment can be experientially exhausted and is, as such, ultimately banal. In other words, I will examine how our deliberate engagement with the interactive environments of digital games can trigger sensations that are analogous to what Romantic authors referred to as Weltschmerz (‘world-weariness’). (shrink)

A intenção do trabalho é comparar os sentidos atribuídos ao virtual nas obras O que é o Virtual? (1995) e Cibercultura (1997) do filósofo francês Pierre Lévy. Para tal tarefa foi utilizada a metodologia da filosofia analítica da linguagem para distinguir os possíveis significados e sentidos que o termo virtual pode possuir. Na obra de 1995 o virtual é entendido então como potência, oposto ao atual, não ao real. Na obra de 1997 o virtual passa (...) a ter ao menos três sentidos: o comum, o filosófico e o tecnológico. Numa escala de virtualidade, estes sentidos se desdobram em cinco posições, sendo o mais forte a Realidade Virtual e o mais fraco o do Senso Comum. A análise mostrou que o sentido de virtual atribuído em 1995 perde poder explicativo na obra de 1997 por desconsiderar o processo de digitalização como fator fundamental para a geração de elementos virtuais. A conclusão é que o conceito de 1995 é tão amplo que se torna estéril quando se trata de explicar as novas tecnologias da informação e comunicação, por isso ele é relegado a penúltimo lugar na escala dos sentidos do virtual na obra de 1997. (shrink)

Este artigo é um relato de experiência do processo de implantação do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem do Programa Primeira Infância Melhor (PIM). O PIM é uma política pública intersetorial de promoção do desenvolvimento integral na primeira infância, implantada no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Entre as atribuições do Governo do Estado está a formação das equipes em mais de 200 municípios. Por causa das restrições impostas pela pandemia de coronavirus, a política deixou de realizar formações presenciais e, (...) de forma emergencial, promoveu formações remotas, utilizando a ferramenta Google Drive. A partir desta experiência, foi decidido implantar uma plataforma de formação online. Para tanto, foi realizado um longo processo de planejamento, com análise dos materiais existentes, adequação aos objetivos pretendidos, criação do ambiente virtual e realização de uma formação piloto na modalidade educação à distância. (shrink)

_Reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts in relation to the novelty introduced by virtual bodies._.