Virtual Reality: Digital or Fictional?

Disputatio 11 (55):371-397 (2019)
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Abstract

Are the objects and events that take place in Virtual Reality genuinely real? Those who answer this question in the affirmative are realists, and those who answer in the negative are irrealists. In this paper we argue against the realist position, as given by Chalmers (2017), and present our own preferred irrealist account of the virtual. We start by disambiguating two potential versions of the realist position—weak and strong— and then go on to argue that neither is plausible. We then introduce a Waltonian variety of ictionalism about the virtual, arguing that this sort of irrealist approach avoids the problems of the realist positions, fits with a unifying theory of representational works, and offers a better account of the phenomenology of engaging in virtual experiences.

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Author Profiles

Neil McDonnell
University of Glasgow
Nathan Wildman
Tilburg University

References found in this work

Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - New York: Basic Books.
Reason, truth, and history.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reason, Truth and History.Hilary Putnam - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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