This paper aims to find, in Merleau-Ponty’s late thinking, a definition of the virtual which aligns with the latest advancements in digital technology while avoiding a reduction to the digital realm or a stark opposition to reality. The virtual is considered as a crucial characteristic in Merleau-Ponty’s late ontology, especially in The Visible and the Invisible, where a “virtual focus” or “virtual center” of the flesh is introduced. The argument posits that Merleau-Ponty’s monism of the flesh results in a dynamic (...) view of virtuality, with significant ontological implications that reshape the relationship between the digital and the analogue. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the virtual is defined by several key features: it applies to a monist perspective on reality, to a dynamic relationality between dialectic poles, and to the fabric of reality. This interpretation of the virtual implies a divergence from the digital, as virtuality belongs to the whole spectrum of reality. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the virtual is rooted in a tradition that conceptualizes it in terms of potentiality rather than illusion or falsity. His theory of the relationship between the virtual, the actual, the real, and the possible presents similarities with critical realism’s ontological domains of the real and the actual, and thus offers alternative and/or additional realist ways of thinking about those domains, especially regarding causal powers residing in relationships rather than entities. Virtuality applies to the empirical domain (...) as well due to experience’s grounding in signs, which are relational. Deleuze also employs virtuality to formulate a concept of simulacra, which illuminates the nature of scientific models and provides a starting point for a critical realist approach to artworks. (shrink)

This article argues that reality and virtuality are still very much phenomenologically distinguishable, although this might not be the case forever. I argue for two main types of virtuality – one inherently involved in the dynamic horizons of perceptual experiences, while the other is all of our experiences of digital images – in order to show that a particular possible instantiation of the latter type, namely “pure” mixed reality (MR), might come to blur and collapse various experiential categories (...) in the future, not least real and irreal, like never before. To show this, there are three main sections. First, I outline my understanding of the two basic types of virtuality, as understood from a classical phenomenological analysis. Second, I give an account of the most important family of “virtual technologies” relevant to the question at hand, namely virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR, AR and MR respectively) technologies. After homing in on MR, I explain what “pure” MR is and how, through tactile holograms, this might change even basic experiential distinctions going forward, and not necessarily for the better. (shrink)

This paper critically describes the mediation of social relations by information technology, drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In the first of three movements, I discuss ethical relations as primordial sociality based in proximity. In the second movement I discuss the how the self encounters the Other, the ethical contact. How can the self make contact with the Other without turning the Other into a theme, a concept or a category? In the third movement, I discuss the electronic mediation (...) of the social as simulation. I argue that simulation shatters proximity since it transforms expression, the trace, into presentation, an image. I argue that the distance produced by the mediation increases the potential for the Other to become appropriated by the self-certain ego as a theme, according to its categories. In simulation, proximity is shattered and the ego can no longer be disturbed---no longer become a hostage. In a final section, I explore alternative arguments for the possibility of electronic mediation that preserves the trace, that possibility of being disturbed. (shrink)

The Digital Revolution has given rise to a new era of perceptual experiences, marked by the convergence of analogue and digital dimensions into what is collectively known as Mixed Reality (MR). This paper explores the complexities of perception within digital environments, addressing fundamental questions regarding body and object experiences in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The study aims to redefine MR by adopting a phenomenological perspective applicable to the intertwining of both analogue and digital dimensions. -/- The reality-virtuality (RV) (...) continuum is revisited, challenging the dichotomy between completely analogue and fully digital dimensions. Drawing inspiration from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh, the paper proposes a phenomenological theory of perception rooted in the interconnectedness of living and non-living entities. This perspective fosters a posthuman reading of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, highlighting the co-participation of the extended body in analogue and digital environments. The study contributes to the understanding of transdimensionality within the MR spectrum, providing a new definition of the continuum as occurring between analogue and digital aspects (AD continuum). In conclusion, the AD continuum is presented as an amalgamation of the human living body and digital technology, offering new insights for the understanding of immersive MR environments. (shrink)

This book is about power and freedoms in our technological world and has two main objectives. The first is to demonstrate that a theoretical exploration of the algorithmic governmentality hypothesis combined with the capability approach is useful for a better understanding of power and freedoms in Ambient Intelligence, a world where information and communication technologies are invisible, interconnected, context aware, personalized, adaptive to humans and act autonomously. The second is to argue that these theories are useful for a better comprehension (...) of privacy and data protection concepts and the evolution of their regulation. Having these objectives in mind, the book outlines a number of theses based on two threads: first, the elimination of the social effects of uncertainty and the risks to freedoms and, second, the vindication of rights. Inspired by and building on the outcomes of different philosophical and legal approaches, this book embodies an effort to better understand the challenges posed by Ambient Intelligence technologies, opening paths for more effective realization of rights and rooting legal norms in the preservation of the potentiality of human capabilities. (shrink)

We use phenomenology to reflect on the experience of being with others as mediated by screens through videoconferencing platforms, a phenomenon accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and social isolation measures. We explore two directions to explain the intersubjective experience of a videoconference. One direction introduces a conceptual background based on previous contributions in phenomenology, while the other one is more speculative: we introduce the novel idea of a phantom other. First, we understand this phenomenon either as a correlate of image (...) consciousness or as a paradoxical perception. Then, we introduce the phantom other using ideas offered in phenomenological descriptions in which the phantom limb appears as a quasi-presence. The phantom other is the same flesh and blood body with whom I co-constitute senses of the world. In a videoconference, the other appears as a whole body with which I coordinate, although she appears as a phantom other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Schmidt introduces the Aristotelian term “koinonia” as denoting a political community which aims to achieve a common good for society as a whole. A good that promotes the flourishing of every party involved. In addition, Schmidt adopts further insight about the term by engaging more thoroughly in discourse about it, realising that this easily extends to the term taking on tenets of communities such as a family. Within family, the terms address even more specific relationships, such as husband and (...) wife, parents and children, sibling relationships, etc. Essentially, Aristotle’s premise of common good persists even in these specific relationships, so much so that Schmidt highlights the pillars which sustain the pursuit of the common good. These pillars are justice, fairness and reciprocity, all grounded in good will and fellowship. This goodwill and fellowship among African parents in a community is to assist each other in raising children in the community and ensure they are grounded in African values, hence the African proverb “a single hand cannot raise a child”. In fact, biological parents may draw from the knowledge of the elderly in the community who can assist in instilling values in the youth. The importance of this is that the elderly in African communities are valued not only as those who sustain order in the community, but are also the custodians of African value systems which younger generations should ideally be grounded in. With the introduction of technology, the digital divide seems to be presenting a challenge when it comes to the solidarity of African parents, as a village, raising their children. Hence, a strategy is required for modern African parents to not abandon this solidarity afforded by their cultural values. The communal way of raising their children should persist in order to preserve the African value of parental solidarity in raising children, even in the midst of what technology and the digital divide presents to the African community. (shrink)

The Digital Revolution has given rise to a new era of perceptual experiences, marked by the convergence of analogue and digital dimensions into what is collectively known as Mixed Reality (MR). This paper explores the complexities of perception within digital environments, addressing fundamental questions regarding body and object experiences in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. The study aims to redefine MR by adopting a phenomenological perspective applicable to the intertwining of both analogue and digital dimensions.The reality-virtuality (RV) continuum is (...) revisited, challenging the dichotomy between completely analogue and fully digital dimensions. Drawing inspiration from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh, the paper proposes a phenomenological theory of perception rooted in the interconnectedness of living and non-living entities. This perspective fosters a posthuman reading of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, highlighting the co-participation of the extended body in analogue and digital environments. The study contributes to the understanding of transdimensionality within the MR spectrum, providing a new definition of the continuum as occurring between analogue and digital aspects (AD continuum). In conclusion, the AD continuum is presented as an amalgamation of the human living body and digital technology, offering new insights for the understanding of immersive MR environments. (shrink)

While the information revolution has ushered in a renewed philosophical interest in the notion of virtuality, the ontological status of virtual entities remains ambiguous. The present paper examines three forms of metaphysical realism about the meaning of the term ‘virtual’: genuine as well as intentionalist and computer-based reductivist realisms. Since all three are found wanting, a nominalist alternative is proposed. It is argued that ‘virtual’ is non-referential, and thus ontologically non-committing. Focusing on the metaphysical problem about the ontological status (...) of virtuality obscures the real issue, namely the ontological status of models as implemented in software. (shrink)

What are networked organizations? The focus of discussions of the networked organization has been on the boundary-spanning nature of these new organizational structures. Yet, the role of the group in these networked organizations has remained unclear. Furthermore, little is known about how computer-mediated communication is used to bridge group and organizational boundaries. In particular, the role of new media in the context of existing communication patterns has received little attention. We examine how employees at a high-tech company, referred to as (...) KME, communicate with members of the work group, other colleagues in the organization, and colleagues outside the organization to better understand their boundary-spanning communications. (shrink)

The similarities between virtuality and play are obvious, beginning with, for instance, the ubiquitous character of both. This paper deals with how insights from research on play can be used to enlighten our understanding of the ethical dimensions of activities in cyberspace, and vice versa. In particular, a central claim that play is beyond vice and virtue is debated and contested.

Is Gilles Deleuze’s concept of virtuality sufficiently close to the concept of virtuality used in informatics and the philosophy of information for computer-created objects and virtual reality to justify the latter’s explanation by means of the former? This question is the main objective of the present paper. We aim to show that, contrary to its most widespread interpretations, the Deleuzian conception of virtuality is epistemological and not ontological, and that this invalidates the belief that Deleuze’s virtuality (...) and that of computer science are sufficiently close to justify the transposition of one to the other. (shrink)

Introduction. The influence of virtual reality on the processes of deanthropologization becomes an obvious fact of the development of numerical rela- tions that determine philosophical concepts in the direction of posthumanistic discourse. In this type of discourse, a person is reduced to a numerical operation, an intermediate procedural link in the network structure of a numerical relationship with other objects of the digital network. The purpose of the article is to identify the rela- tionship between virtuality and imagination, the (...) distinction between a virtual person and a vividly imagining one. Methods. The author uses the methods of decon- struction, which identifiy new philosophical meanings of established understand- ings of virtuality and related anthropological types, and the phenomenological method of studying the issues of virtuality and anthropological reality, forming new perspectives for studying the phenom- enon of virtuality through an appeal to the constitu- tive role of consciousness. Scientific novelty of the research. The scientific novelty of the study is represented by the discovery of a new anthropological distinction between homo imaginabundus and homo virtualis, implying on- tological differences of these types in their appeal to the subjective and objective constitutive role of consciousness. Results. If the anthropological type homo imagi- nabundus is vividly imaginative and is associated with the phenomena of authentic virtuality and sub- jectivity, then homo virtualis refers to inauthentic virtuality only as one of its possible variants without connection with the self—affecting component as such. Conclusions. Anthropological reality is in a state of bifurcation, from which it can emerge in several ways, the most likely of which will be the ways of deanthropologization in algorithmic flows and codes of the digital environment, or the way of preserving the phenomena of self-action, vivid im- agination associated with subjectivity and the field of authentic virtuality. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the adjective “virtual” has become the epithet that accompanies great technological advances these days. It is not unusual for a reader nowadays to look up a quote in a book from a virtual library, for a teacher to grade his students on a virtual campus or for a customer to check his bank statement through his virtual bank. The adjective “virtual” has become a modern reference which can be found more and more frequently accompanying a (...) new product that seeks its place in the market. The virtual has become fashionable. (shrink)

We are living in an era when the focus of human relationships with the world is shifting from execution and physical impact to control and cognitive/informational interaction. This emerging, increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial, intelligent agents. After the industrial revolution, which extended the human body through mechanical machinery, the cognitive revolution extends the human mind/cognition through information-processing machinery. These novel (...) circumstances come with new qualities and preferences demanding new conceptualizations. We have some work ahead of us to establish value systems and practices extended from the real to the increasingly virtual/info-computational. This paper first presents a current view of the virtual versus the real and then offers an interpretation framework based on an info-computational understanding of cognition in which agency implies computational processing of informational structures of the world as an infosphere. The notion of “good life” is discussed in light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere, connecting virtuality as a space of potential and alternative worlds for an agent for whom the reality is a space of actual experiences, in the sense of Deleuze. Even though info-computational framework enables us to see both the real world and the diversity of virtual worlds in terms of computational processes on informational structures, based on a distinct layered cognitive architecture of all physical agents, there is clear difference between potential worlds of the virtual and actual agent’s experiences made in the real. Info-computationalism enables insight into the mechanisms of infosphere and elucidates its importance as cognitively predominant environment and communication media. The conclusion is that by cocooning ourselves in an elaborate info-computational infrastructure of the virtual, we may be increasingly isolating ourselves from the reality of direct experience of the world. The biggest challenges of the cognitive revolution may not be technological but ethical. They are about the nature of being human and its values. (shrink)

This text attempts to analyze and inquire the relationship between virtuality and imagination in Susanne Langer’s art theory. One of my main purposes is to know whether the “actual-virtual” binomial can be applied, without any theoretical concern, to artistic objects and art in general. Since, in Langer, the symbol theory is directly connected with a theory of perception, it remains to scrutinize how aesthetic experiences mediated by the several artistic modalities imply the transformation of works of art into virtual (...) objects. That such a transformation carries the effective power of imagination is a capital condition inherent to all artistic symbolization processes. That these latter, however, do not always express a linear dynamic of the “actual-virtual” binomial is, as will be seen, a critical point of view that must be applied to the aesthetic formulations and concepts developed by Langer. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze, arguably the best-known theorist of virtuality, describes the virtual as part of an ontology of becoming and multiplicity: he sees the virtual as a characteristic of being which is directly opposed to, but simultaneously constitutive of the actual aspect of reality, as a force that works mostly invisibly, but powerfully within the interstices of the material world, introducing constant flux into reality through its negotiations with the actual.1 This conception of the virtual represents something of a leitmotif (...) for the forty-four essays collected in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. The collection offers a wide range of approaches to virtuality as a philosophical and aesthetic concept as well as a... (shrink)

This book is a collection of 12 studies by international authors in honour of the philosopher László Ropolyi on his 75th birthday. The topics discussed include the philosophy of technology and the internet, epistemology (reformation of knowledge, epistemic consumerism, post-truth), history of philosophy (regime change in Hungary and Central-Europe, Heidegger's Black Notebooks), philosophy of art (new readymades, photography and AI), the philosophy and problems of virtuality and AI.

A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that's the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of "technophilosophy," David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, (...) Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there's an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What's the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers' mind-bending analysis. Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come. (shrink)

Westworld portrays a world where humans and human‐like machines coexist. When systems of observation are referred, Nolan's predilection is considered for adding computational science subjects to his storylines. According to the theorist Katherine Hayles, they present a geometrical pattern of the relationship between the observer and the observed worlds. Westworld is a posthuman narrative that develops essential characteristic from Nolan's productions, which is the bidirectional line between science and fiction. The storytelling mythologies result in the design of the backstories of (...) some characters being integrated within the collective imaginary of Westworld and its visitors. The characters from Westworld are placed in the blurred borderline between memory and imagination. The blurred borderline between memory and imagination is seen in the creation of an internal otherness in the form of a collective bicameral mind, considered as a split personality or doppelganger, and as a new manifestation of the semiosis of virtuality. (shrink)

I argue that virtual reality is a sort of genuine reality. In particular, I argue for virtual digitalism, on which virtual objects are real digital objects, and against virtual fictionalism, on which virtual objects are fictional objects. I also argue that perception in virtual reality need not be illusory, and that life in virtual worlds can have roughly the same sort of value as life in non-virtual worlds.

Does digital technology liberate or imprison? This article confronts Heidegger’s diagnosis of technology as enframing—the reduction of beings to calculable resources—by asking whether digital culture is doomed to confinement or capable of opening unforeseen freedoms. We argue that the answer hinges on where agency is located: a humanist ‘virtual reality’ perspective risks deepening enframing, while acknowledging non-human agents allows technology to exceed calculative closure. Turning to Heidegger’s notion of art as a ‘saving power,’ we propose analyzing avant-garde practices through two (...) central Heideggerian strategies for revealing technology’s essence—brokenness and alienation—thereby seeing them as revelatory modes that dismantle habitual functions and disclose unthought potentials. Drawing on Graham Harman’s tool-being, yet rejecting his radical autonomy of objects, we point to the concept of ‘real virtuality’ (DeLanda) as a material potentiality exposed by art. Through Marcel Duchamp, surrealism, Fluxus, and Situationism, we trace how avant-garde art models ways whereby digital culture might escape enframing. (shrink)

In my paper, I establish an Ingardenian phenomenological ontology of "virtualized ficta", i.e., fictional entities introduced to virtual gaming. The first Section of my paper provides an ontology of virtualized ficta, focusing primarily on their ‘‘existential moments’’. But in order to have a firm grasp of the ontological aspects grounding the virtual work, it’s important to engage its strata. This is what I attempt to do in Section 1.2. Virtualized ficta’s intentional dependencies are strongly manifest in what I call the (...) ‘‘strata of the virtual work’’. That is, I repurpose Ingarden’s strata of the literary work, the picture, and the film to showcase that virtualized ficta, from the bottom up (i.e., from their pure ontology to aesthetics) are purely intentional entities. In short, I argue for a purely intentional account of virtualized ficta as ficta-made-virtualia, whose ontological status is determined by the creative acts of game developers and gamers. (shrink)

In a context where technology and the virtual universe are becoming fully integrated into human life, including the life of faith, the question arises as to how spirituality and religiosity can be mediated by digital means. Starting from this assumption, the contribution explores philosophically how the advent of the digital world has reformulated the concept of sacramentality. After a comparative analysis of the notions of sacramentality within the Catholic and Lutheran Churches, the contribution examines the specific case of the sacrament (...) of confession and Catholic sacramentals, such as blessings. Adopting the extended notion of sacramentality proposed by Edward Schillebeeckx, the essay attempts to delineate a theoretical framework for considering some practical applications of these concepts. It then proposes to explore how concepts of sacramentality might be applied in the digital world. Finally, the possible transposition of sacramental concepts into virtual environments will be investigated, examining how they might be reinterpreted and adapted to meet the spiritual needs of the contemporary world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order (...) to develop a clearer description of the virtual. However, beyond an embodied account that relates to early technologies, Merleau-Ponty also presents through his concept of the flesh a novel avenue for the ontological investigation of the virtual. The flesh describes the intertwining of the body-subject and the world, which is suggestive of a new account of the individual’s sensibility in relation to the virtual. An original concept is suggested to describe the existential-ontological structure of the virtual: The embodied screen. The embodied screen as neologism presents an alternative conceptualisation of the coincidence of the body-subject (who understands the world spatially) with the virtual (as non-spatial). By tracing imaginative signification and embodied habitude in terms of the virtual, this article suggests certain existential implications of the virtual for contemporary being. (shrink)

This book investigates the ontological state of relations in a unique way. Starting with the notion of system, it shows that the system can be understood as a relational structure, and that relations can be assessed within themselves, with no need to transform relations in elements. “Relations” are understood in contrast to “relational property”: without a relation there is no identity, therefore no existence. What allows us to do that without hypostatizing the relation, and without immediately taking it simply as (...) a causal relation, can be better grasped, possibly, in reference to a few entities that make best display of their systemic nature, for example images, works of art, and virtual bodies. This book shows how virtual bodies are ontological hybrids representing a type of entity that has never appeared in the world before. This entity becomes a phenomenon in interactivity and evades the dichotomy between “external” and “internal”; it is neither a cognitive product of the consciousness, nor an image of the mind. The user is well aware of experiencing anotherreality, also in the sense of a paradoxical reduplication of perceptual synthesis. The virtual body-environment is therefore simultaneously external and internal, with virtual bodies-environments to be seen as artificial windows to an intermediary world. In this intermediary world, the space itself is the result of interactivity; the world takes place in the sense or feeling of immersion experienced by the user; and the body, perceived as “other”, takes upon itself the sense of its reality, of its effectiveness, as an imaginary and pathic incision, as a production of desire and emotion, to the point that the feeling of reality conveyed by a virtual environment will rely significantly on how this environment produces emotions in the users. (shrink)

La cultura digital nos plantea una nueva relación entre teatro y sociedad impulsada por el impacto de las nuevas tecnologías, con el consecuente desplazamiento de sus códigos representacionales: texto y puesta en escena. Modelos híbridos, virtuales y presenciales emergen como perfiles experimentales de creación escénica. Sin embargo, estas relaciones entre virtualidad, tecnología, innovación y teatro han estado presentes a lo largo de su historia, siendo la virtualidad un factor consustancial al hecho escénico tanto en lo dramatúrgico como en lo espectacular.

Autism is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon. Not only is it difficult to understand the various and diverse aspects of autism, their relation to each other is also complex and still poorly understood. In my article, “Material encounters. A phenomenological account of social interaction in autism,” I have addressed this heterogeneity by presenting an understanding of how social features of autism relate to behavioral features. Straddling this divide between the social and the non-social that still pervades much thinking in philosophy, psychiatry, (...) and psychology is crucial for understanding the diverse experiences of autistic persons and... (shrink)

We do not know what art is, but art makes full display of the relational being of the image, of the personal power of imagination, of the impersonal, irresistible, power of collective imagination. Any philosophical attempt to define art mostly turns into a historical non-achievable endeavor, and yet one could easily claim that art is some sort of accomplishment or perfecting of experience, and in particular of so-called aesthetic experience, meaning by aesthetic nothing less than the highest degree of complexity (...) conveyed by the word experience. Hence art provides a paradigmatic opportunity for an inquiry of experience in general and of aisthesis in particular. Simply put, in its original and outward simplicity, aisthesis is constitutively relation. Any perception entails intention, a synthesis of past and future (protentions and retentions), attentional aiming, passivity and activity, and so on; in equally simple terms, being the perfect synthesis of a work of art (opera, in Italian) and its operating (operare), any artistic operation is also relation. It is the relation between the artists and their project—although superseded by the impersonality of inspiration; it is the relation with materials, techniques, the culture of oneʼs time, with the commissioner; it is the relation between the work of art and who achieves it, who enjoys it, with the bystanders, with its interpretations and the history of its impact. As there is radically no aisthesis which is not relation, similarly there is no art which is not relation—as loudly spoken by performative art and, notably, by relational art today. (shrink)

The development of computer sciences has transformed the way of thinking and our perception of the world. To express this new view of the world, a new language is created, which uses such notions as “virtuality”, “virtual world”, “virtual reality”. These words have already worked in our colloquial speech and our thinking. However, they are used in various contexts and have a different meaning. The paper offers some remarks on the problem of the meaning of these notions and draws (...) some consequences of their interpretation. (shrink)

Reams of empirical studies and a century or two of social theory have noticed that modernity produces increasingly shallow and instrumental relationships. Where bonds of mutuality, based on face-to-face connection, once survived, we now tend to exist in a depthless, dematerialized technoculture. This is the trajectory of industrial mass society: not transcending itself through technology, but instead becoming ever more fully realized. In this context, it is striking to note that the original usage of “virtual” was as the adjectival form (...) of “virtue.” Virtual reality (VR) is not only the creation of a narcissistic subculture; it represents a much wider…. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how digital environments function as epistemological instruments that invert classical philosophical frameworks. Through operative analysis of baroque and contemporary implementations of virtuality, we identify twin philosophical inversions: (1) the converse cave phenomenon inverts Plato’s epistemological vector—rather than escaping shadows to find truth, we use digital transparency to reveal universal constructedness; (2) embodied entelechia inverts Aristotle’s teleological necessity—rather than predetermined actualization at fixed positions, virtual spaces achieve emergent co-constitution through movement-responsive embodiment. These inversions are enabled by four (...) synergistically operating mechanisms—persistent across implementations but phenomenologically intensified in digital forms: material transformation with experiential continuity, productive tension between determination and openness, transcendence of categorical dichotomies, and reflexive awareness of mediation. Together, these concepts constitute a tripartite model integrating epistemological, ontological, and phenomenological dimensions of virtual experience. Minecraft’s deliberate cubic aesthetic (2009) exemplifies how analytical power derives from explicitness, not mimesis—its obvious construction reveals operative mechanisms that remain naturalized in physical spaces. Where existing virtuality scholarship analyzes technological manifestations, our operative analysis reveals underlying mechanisms, challenging technological determinism in both its utopian and pessimistic forms—recognizing digital virtuality as intensification and explicitation of persistent mechanisms rather than unprecedented innovation or new deception. This framework dissolves the virtual/physical dichotomy, showing these as different degrees of explicitation rather than ontologically distinct categories. (shrink)