Las múltiples estrategias que ofrece el arte contemporáneo, particularmente el de la escena, son revisitados a partir de las formulaciones que, desde hace unos años, creadores, investigadores y académicos están proponiendo. La presencia física y en la realidad virtual, el evento y la extrema realidad, así como la precariedad, debatida y ejecutada en performances y textos de Europa y Estados Unidos han sido el centro de varias discusiones que aquí se actualizan a través de la creación artística de mujeres (...) mexicanas y los entornos en los que se involucran. El seguimiento esta vez enfatiza la construcción de una “vida” que da sentido al mundo, como parte de los procesos de “escrituras” expandidas, donde la “presencialidad”, las mediaciones y la precariedad permiten diálogos con diferentes realidades en las que las nuevas tecno-logías son un soporte relevante a tener en cuenta. (shrink)

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. (...) By means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

L'auteur résume dans cet article le contenu du commentaire du Phèdre qui doit paraître en mai 1998. Le Phèdre constitue un véritable « manifeste » qui présente un programme dans lequel Platon, alors âgé de soixante à soixante-cinq ans environ, prend position sur la question de l'écriture, à un moment où celle-ci était en train de se substituer à l'oralité pour constituer un instrument de communication privilégié. Dans le Phèdre, Platon veut montrer que, au moment même où il écrit, il (...) est le plus grand écrivain de la Grèce. Il démontre ce point en deux étapes: il entame tout d'abord une « joute oratoire » avec Lysias, alors considéré comme le meilleur écrivain de son temps, où il fait montre de sa supériorité sur les rhéteurs tant sur la forme que sur le contenu; il propose ensuite une théorie de l'art d'écrire dont le caractère adéquat se fonde sur la méthode dialectique. Il énonce de surcroît les trois critères fondamentaux qui doivent gouverner tous les discours, que ceux-ci soient écrits ou oraux: 1 / il faut connaître l'essence de la chose dont on parle; 2 / il faut connaître la nature des âmes auxquelles on s'adresse; 3 / il faut adapter les contenus des messages que l'on veut communiquer aux capacités de réception des âmes auxquelles on s'adresse. Toutefois, les messages du philosophe ne peuvent être transmis par la seule écriture: les choses les plus précieuses, le philosophe les écrit dans les âmes des hommes, autrement dit, il les communique dans le registre de l' « oralité dialectique ». Les discours écrits n'ont aucune autonomie, puisqu'ils ont, de fait, besoin du « secours » de l'auteur. Pour comprendre les discours écrits, fussent-ils les meilleurs, une connaissance préalable des choses dont ils traitent est nécessaire, connaissance qui ne peut être obtenue que par des voies différentes de celles que fournissent les discours écrits. The author summarizes in this article the content of his Phaedrus' commentary which will appear in May of 1998. The Phaedrus constitutes a true « manifesto ». It presents a programme in which Plato (who was then aged sixty or sixty-five), defends a position on the question of writing at a time when writing was being substituted for orality as the primary instrument of communication. In the Phaedrus, Plato wants to show, while he is writing it, that he is the greatest writer in Greece. He demonstrates this point in two stages: first, he initiates an « oratorical contest » with Lysias who was then considered the best writer of this time, where he shows his superiority over the orators both in form and in content; then, he proposes a theory of the art of writing the appropriate character of which is based on the dialectical method. Moreover, Plato states the three primary criteria which must govern any discourse whether oral or written: 1 / knowledge of the essence of what one speaks; 2 / knowledge of the nature of the souls to be addressed; 3 / knowledge of the content of the messages that one addressed. However, the messages of the philosopher cannot be transmitted only by writing. The most precious things are written by the philosopher in the souls of men, in other words, he communicates them in the register of dialectical orality. Written discourses have no autonomy since they need the « help » of the author. To understand written discourse, including the best, a preliminary knowledge of the things with which they deal is necessary, knowledge which can only be obtained through paths different from those which are provided by written discourse. (shrink)

Foucault appears now and again in the work of Charles Taylor, but fleetingly, almost hauntingly. This is not surprising because Taylor and Foucault share many ideas and yet remain starkly opposed. This is especially true of Taylor's most recent work, his monumental Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. In it he is characteristically brilliant, in the sense that he attempts to illuminate a great many things all at once. Foucault is mentioned here and there in that (...) work, along with a great many others. However, I would claim that Foucault's presence is much more sustained than the index would have us believe. In fact, one might say that Foucault is the shadow cast by Taylor's brilliance. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an imbalance between the clinical needs of the population and the effective availability of advanced life support (ALS) resources. Triage protocols have thus become necessary. Triage decisions in situations of scarce resources were not extraordinary in the pre-COVID-19 era; these protocols abounded in the context of organ transplantation. However, this prior experience was not considered during the COVID-19 outbreak in Spain. Lacking national guidance or public coordination, each hospital has been forced to put forth independent (...) and autonomous triage protocols, most of which were, nonetheless, based on common ethical principles and clinical criteria. However, controversial, non-clinical criteria have also been defended by Spanish scientific societies and public institutions, including setting an age cut-off value for unilaterally withholding ALS, using ‘social utility’ criteria, prioritising healthcare professionals or using ‘first come, first served’ policies. This paper describes the most common triage criteria used in the Spanish context during the COVID-19 epidemic. We will highlight our missed opportunities by comparing these criteria to those used in organ transplantation protocols. The problems posed by subjective, non-clinical criteria will also be discussed. We hope that this critical review might be of use to countries at earlier stages of the epidemic while we learn from our mistakes. (shrink)

In this article we discuss the aspects of designing facial expressions for virtual humans (VHs) with a specific culture. First we explore the notion of cultures and its relevance for applications with a VH. Then we give a general scheme of designing emotional facial expressions, and identify the stages where a human is involved, either as a real person with some specific role, or as a VH displaying facial expressions. We discuss how the display and the emotional meaning (...) of facial expressions may be measured in objective ways, and how the culture of displayers and the judges may influence the process of analyzing human facial expressions and evaluating synthesized ones. We review psychological experiments on cross-cultural perception of emotional facial expressions. By identifying the culturally critical issues of data collection and interpretation with both real and VHs, we aim at providing a methodological reference and inspiration for further research. (shrink)

London-based company ScanLab Projects is a multi-disciplinary commercial collaboration between architect, artist, coders and designers who utilize technologies surrounding 3D laser scanning in their practice. Inherent in the manner their projects are pitched is through reference to the photographic as technological process. Central to their engagement with the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanning apparatus is a consideration of the relationality between virtual or digital object and what could be determined as extrinsic or ‘real’ terrain. In Post-lenticular Landscapes, (...) 2017, ScanLab created a series of LiDAR scans of Yosemite National Park. The landscape, presented as a stereoscopic film work where the spectator flies through an ephemeral black and white point cloud, is contextualized relationally to a certain photo-historical context and lineage: As Yosemite is synonymous with the advent of photographic process through the work of Muybridge, Watkins, Woods and Adams, the work revisits an archetypal image of the American sublime. In this text, I unpack ScanLab’s usage and conceptualization of LiDAR scans referentially to an understanding of the photographic. By considering how ScanLab frames our understanding of the project through the technological apparatus, the text attempts to problematize the scans by reading them through a particular art historic heritage. In this context, I posit alternate ways of reading the work, specifically through reference to the image of Yosemite that has proliferated across the desktops of Apple computers since 2014. Furthermore, through a reading of metonymy in the writing of Eelco Runia, the eerie as understood by Mark Fisher and in relation to Lev Manovich’s description of photorealism, I propose that the future of the mediation and understandings of machinic vision are to be thought with a reconsidered notion of the photographic. (shrink)

This piece explicates some chief modes of consciousness in phenomenology in order to show that a very significant challenge of virtuality surfaces both within, as well as outside of, the discipline. This issue is of no small importance today, where the difference between perception and imagination, real and irreal, as well as presence and absence, are all becoming increasingly vague because of new technologies and the intrinsic virtualities involved therein. In this context, the question is: Where does virtuality (...) fit in such a picture? I will argue that phenomenology can start to account for such developments, although much more explicative work will be required in the future. With this in mind, sections two to four will articulate an initial phenomenology of perception, phantasy, and image-consciousness, as found chiefly in works by Husserl and Sartre. Then, section five will question the preceding phenomenological theory through some phenomenological and non-phenomenological thinkers, who all seem to have a concept of virtuality at the heart of their work. Lastly, in the final two sections I will suggest a difference between real and irreal virtualities, and briefly mention some current virtual technologies in order to show that there is a constant and complex interplay between the real, irreal, and the virtual in many of our everyday experiences—an interplay that needs to be investigated much further if we are to make sense of how it is changing how we think and behave. (shrink)

In developing a new theory of vision in Ad Vitellionem paralipomena Kepler introduced a new optical concept, pictura, which is an image projected on to a screen by a camera obscura. He distinguished this pictura from an imago, the traditional image of medieval optics that existed only in the imagination. By the 1670s a new theory of optical imagery had been developed, and Kepler's pictura and imago became real and virtual images, two aspects of a unified concept of (...) image. The new concept of image developed out of a synthesis of Kepler's determination of the geometrical location of a pictura as the limit, or focus, of refracted pencils of rays and the triangulation used by a single eye to determine the perceived location of an imago. The distinction between real and imaginary images was largely developed by Gilles Personne de Roberval and the Jesuits Francesco Eschinardi and Claude François Milliet Dechales. (shrink)

Routledge is running a monograph sale through June 11th. Readers can now access The Phenomenology of Real and Virtual Places free-of-charge for seven days then the eBook can be purchased for £10/$15. Go to the online tfstore kortext com and look for the book using: the-phenomenology-of-real-and-virtual-places-384647 (EPUB version) the-phenomenology-of-real-and-virtual-places-390649 (PDF version) or check attached hyperlinks below. ABSTRACT: This collection of essays explores the history, implications, and usefulness of phenomenology for the study of real (...) and virtual places. While the influence of phenomenology on architecture and urban design has been widely acknowledged, its effect on the design of virtual places and environments has yet to be exposed to critical reflection. These essays from philosophers, cultural geographers, designers, architects, and archaeologists advance the connection between phenomenology and the study of place. The book features historical interpretations on this topic, as well as context-specific and place-centric applications that will appeal to a wide range of scholars across disciplinary boundaries. The ultimate aim of this book is to provide more helpful and precise definitions of phenomenology that shed light on its growth as a philosophical framework and on its development in other disciplines concerned with the experience of place. (shrink)

If well-designed, the results of a Randomised Clinical Trial can justify a causal claim between treatment and effect in the study population; however, additional information might be needed to carry over this result to another population. RCTs have been criticized exactly on grounds of failing to provide this sort of information Evidence, inference and enquiry. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011), as well as to black-box important details regarding the mechanisms underpinning the causal law instantiated by the RCT result. On (...) the other side, so-called In Silico Clinical Trials face the same criticisms addressed against standard modelling and simulation techniques, and cannot be equated to experiments Philosophy of molecular medicine: foundational issues in research and practice, Routledge, New York, 2017; Parker in Synthese 169:483–496, 2009; Parke in Philos Sci 81:516–536, 2014; Diez Roux in Am J Epidemiol 181:100–102, 2015 and related discussions in Frigg and Reiss in Synthese 169:593–613, 2009; Winsberg in Synthese 169:575–592, 2009; Beisbart and Norton in Int Stud Philos Sci 26:403–422, 2012). We undertake a formal analysis of both methods in order to identify their distinct contribution to causal inference in the clinical setting. Britton et al.’s study :E2098–E2105, 2013) on the impact of ion current variability on cardiac electrophysiology is used for illustrative purposes. We deduce that, by predicting variability through interpolation, ISCTs aid with problems regarding extrapolation of RCTs results, and therefore in assessing their external validity. Furthermore, ISCTs can be said to encode “thick” causal knowledge —as opposed to “thin” difference-making information inferred from RCTs. Hence, ISCTs and RCTs cannot replace one another but rather, they are complementary in that the former provide information about the determinants of variability of causal effects, while the latter can, under certain conditions, establish causality in the first place. (shrink)

What is encoded in working memory may be a content-addressable pointer, but a critical portion of the information that is addressed includes the motor information to achieve deictic reference in the environment. Additionally, the same strategy that is used to access environment information just in time for its use may also be used to access long-term memory via the pre-frontal cortex.

In Playtest, our thrill‐seeking protagonist Cooper tests SaitoGemu's “interactive augmented reality system.” As the fears he must face in “the most personal survival horror game in history” ramp up, Cooper begins to lose the ability to tell what's real and what isn't and decides he wants out, only to find that isn't so simple. But will virtual reality really be that scary? Perhaps no more than books, films and traditional video games, especially when the novelty wears off. Perhaps (...) the real moral of Playtest is “Call your mom”. But beneath the surface a much darker lesson lurks: that when our fantasies feel real, and have the power to hurt, they are no longer just a game. Virtual reality can build a bridge between what seems real and what is real, and this means its power to scare us silly is not just novel: it's revolutionary. (shrink)

In developed countries, companies are now substantially reliant on the skills and abilities of their leaders to tackle a variety of complex issues. There is a growing consensus that leadership development training and assessment methods should adopt more holistic methodologies, including those associated with the emotional and neuroendocrine aspects of learning. Recent research into the assessment of leadership competencies has proposed the use of objective methods and measurements based on neuroscience. One of the challenges to be faced in the development (...) of a performance-based methodology to measure leadership skills is how to generate real-life situations with triggers that allow us to study management competencies under controlled laboratory conditions. A way to address this question is to take advantage of virtual environments to recreate real-life situations that might arise in performance-based assessments. We propose virtual reality (VR) as a very promising tool to observe various leadership related behavioral patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations. By seamlessly embedding assessment methods into virtual learning environments, VR can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity. VR also holds unlimited opportunities for leadership training providing subjects with intelligent tutoring systems that adapts situations in real time according to the observed behaviors. (shrink)

Atypical sensorimotor developmental trajectories greatly contribute to the profound heterogeneity that characterizes Autism Spectrum Disorders. Individuals with ASD manifest deviations in sensorimotor processing with early markers in the use of sensory information coming from both the external world and the body, as well as motor difficulties. The cascading effect of these impairments on the later development of higher-order abilities underlines the need for interventions that focus on the remediation of sensorimotor integration skills. One of the promising technologies for such stimulation (...) is Immersive Virtual Reality. In particular, head-mounted displays have unique features that fully immerse the user in virtual realities which disintegrate and otherwise manipulate multimodal information. The contribution of each individual sensory input and of multisensory integration to perception and motion can be evaluated and addressed according to a user’s clinical needs. HMDs can therefore be used to create virtual environments aimed at improving people’s sensorimotor functioning, with strong potential for individualization for users. Here we provide a narrative review of the sensorimotor atypicalities evidenced by children and adults with ASD, alongside some specific relevant features of IVR technology. We discuss how individuals with ASD may interact differently with IVR versus real environments on the basis of their specific atypical sensorimotor profiles and describe the unique potential of HMD-delivered immersive virtual environments to this end. (shrink)

…Not without a providential design, the historical events of the thirteenth century led to the Holy Land, the Order of Friars Minor. The Sons of St. Francis have since then remained in the land of Jesus … to continuously serve the local Church and to preserve, restore, protect the holy places, and their loyalty to the wishes of the Founder and the mandate of the Holy See was often sealed by acts of extraordinary virtue and generosity…Holy Land guides mediate between (...) pilgrims and multiple Jerusalems. This article focuses on the roles played in this process of mediation by Franciscan human guides in two contexts: actual Jerusalem and the virtual Jerusalem of San Vivaldo.1 The longstanding, special relationship... (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure the rise of online Adoration of the Reserved Sacrament during the widespread suspension of worship in response to COVID‐19. Taking the phenomenon seriously as an instance of the sensus fidelium exposes limitations in the Tridentine formulation of the mode of sacramental presence. Alternative approaches may be developed with reference to the thinking of two post‐Heideggerian philosophers, Marion and Nancy, who in different ways explore the subject's encounter with the divine in the (...) phenomenal world as a double kenosis, without reference to an abstract concept of Being. These accounts together suggest an account of adoration as a kenotic response to divine kenosis and so suggest understandings of Eucharistic Adoration that are not bounded by the constraints of physical materiality. The paper concludes by considering the wider applicability of this approach in a world that is, increasingly, a hybrid of physical and ‘virtual’ phenomena and at a time when US Catholics are believed to be losing their faith in the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. (shrink)

Immersive virtual environments can produce a state of behaviour referred to as ‘presence’, during which the individual responds to the virtual environment as if it were real. Presence can be arranged to scientifically evaluate and affect our consciousness within a controlled virtual environment. This phenomenon makes the use of virtual environments amenable to existing and in-development forms of therapy for various conditions. Delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU) is one such condition for (...) which virtual reality (VR) technology has not been evaluated to date. We are currently assessing the feasibility and utility of a delirium prevention and treatment system, which implements VR to improve quality of sleep, reduce pain, lower usage of sedatives, and stimulate cognition. The proposed system will consist of 3-axis wearable accelerometers, 6-DOF position trackers, a VR system and apps designed to promote sleep quality and mindfulness. Our a priori hypothesis is that our VR therapy system would lower the occurrence of delirium in patients admitted to ICUs. (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to (...) critically challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in social behavior and experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, including “social distancing” and widespread social isolation, may have altered personal space preferences, we investigated this possibility in two independent samples. First, we compared the size of (...) personal space measured before the onset of the pandemic to its size during the pandemic in separate groups of subjects. Personal space size was significantly larger in those assessed during the onset of the pandemic. Lastly, we found that the practice of social distancing and perceived risk of being infected with COVID-19 were linked to this personal space enlargement during the pandemic. Taken together, these findings suggest that personal space boundaries expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic independent of actual infection risk level. As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic subside, personal space preferences may provide one index of recovery from the psychological effects of this crisis. (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)

The promise of virtual reality is that it may eventually lead us to a "third state of consciousness" transcending the objective reality of our embodied beings and opening up to us a world of expanded realization. However, the recurring themes of our hero myths, both religious and secular, remind us of the importance of remaining grounded in the real world of embodied people and phenomenal perception. Advances in neuroscience even suggest that unconscious processing of perceptual stimuli may guide (...) our behaviors. Thus, the journey from the phenomenal to the noumenal is a round-trip ticket. We take with us the strength of our moral convictions to serve us on our journey and bring back the spiritual expansion that always comes of travel. (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.

Driving simulators are becoming increasingly common in driver training and assessment. Since virtual reality is generally regarded as an appropriate environment for measuring risk behavior, simulators are also used to assess hazard perception, which is considered to be one of the most important skills for safe driving. Simulators, which offer challenges that are indeed comparable to driving in real traffic, but at a very low risk of physical injury, have the potential to complement theoretical and practical driver trainings (...) and tests. Although configurations and fidelity differ considerably between driving simulators, studies comparing the impact of their distinct features on driving performance and test validity remain rare. In this context, prior research demonstrated that a wider field of view led to earlier speed adjustments in response to potential hazards—especially for experienced drivers. The wider field of view was assumed to cause the drivers to be more present in the virtual world, which in turn provoked more natural scanning of the road and therefore, earlier hazard detection in experienced drivers. Research on spatial presence in other contexts support this assumption. The present experiment investigated whether this effect could be enhanced by an even more immersive presentation technique for driving simulation: a head-mounted display. Moreover, we studied the interplay between display mode, sense of presence and simulation sickness. Eighty experienced and less experienced drivers completed six simulation-based hazard perception scenarios, which were displayed either via a triple-monitor set-up or an HMD. Results indicate that the experienced drivers showed very similar driving and risk behavior as the inexperienced drivers in both experimental conditions. However, there were significant differences between the two display conditions. The use of an HMD resulted in a clearer and more abrupt speed reduction, more virtual presence, and a higher degree of simulation sickness. However, the interrelation between these three variables could not be conclusively clarified in the present study and thus represents a research aim that could be addressed in future studies. (shrink)

Movement abnormalities are prevalent across all stages of schizophrenia contributing to poor social functioning and reduced quality of life. To date, treatments are scarce, often involving pharmacological agents, but none have been shown to improve movement abnormalities effectively. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool used to simulate virtual environments where behavioral performance can be quantified safely across different tasks while exerting control over stimulus delivery, feedback and measurement in real time. Sensory information is transmittedviaa head mounted display (...) allowing users to directly interact with virtual objects and bodies using gestures and body movements in the real world to perform different actions, permitting a sense of immersion in the simulated virtual environment. Although, VR has been widely used for successful motor rehabilitation in a variety of different neurological domains, none have been exploited for motor rehabilitation in schizophrenia. The objectives of this article are to review movement abnormalities specific to schizophrenia, and how VR can be utilized to restore and improve motor functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Constructing VR-mediated motor-cognitive interventions that can help in retaining and transferring the learned outcomes to real life are also discussed. (shrink)

Freedom of expression on social media is sometimes carried out unethically and often undermines religious symbols, resulting in friction and destructive actions. This research was conducted with the aim of knowing the polarisation of religious conflict in cyberspace and the process of diffusion of religious conflict from the virtual world to the real world. This type of research is descriptive qualitative. This research was conducted in Central Java, namely, in the cities of Solo and Semarang. The results of (...) the study show that the process of diffusion of religious conflict from the virtual world to the real world occurs through the stages of information sharing and conflict initiation, equalisation of perceptions, virtual community support, virtual action and real action. Therefore, to anticipate virtual conflicts, it is necessary to have filters from authorised authorities such as administrators, website managers or law enforcement officials. In addition, there needs to be regulatory support related to provocation in cyberspace, so as to minimise the emergence of conflicts in cyberspace. Contribution: This research contributes to anticipating virtual conflicts before they actually occur. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 78-91. This article consists of three parts. First, I will review the major themes of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude . Since some of my readers will have read this book and others not, I will try to strike a balance between clear summary and fresh critique. Second, I discuss an unpublished book by Meillassoux unfamiliar to all readers of this article, except those scant few that may have gone digging in the microfilm archives of the École normale (...) supérieure. The book in question is Meillassoux’s revised doctoral dissertation L’Inexistence divine (or The Divine Inexistence ), with its seemingly bizarre vision of a God who does not yet exist but might exist in the future. Without literally accepting this view, I will claim that it is philosophically interesting in ways that even a hardened sceptic might be able to appreciate. Third and finally, I will speculate on the possible future of Meillassoux’s speculative materialism itself. And here I mean its future development not by Meillassoux, but by those readers who might be inspired by his book. Plato could never have predicted the emergence of Aristotle’s philosophy, despite the obvious debt of the latter to the former. Nor could Descartes have predicted Spinoza and Leibniz, nor Kant the German Idealists, and neither could Husserl in 1901 have foreseen the later emergence of Heidegger. How are the works of interesting philosophers transformed by later thinkers of comparable importance? While it may seem that there are countless ways to do this, I think there are only two basic ways in which this happens: you can radicalize your predecessors, or you can reverse them. I will close this article with a few words about these two methods, and try to imagine how Meillassoux might be radicalized or reversed by some future admirer. My view is that the more important thinkers are, the easier they are to radicalize or reverse. This helps explain why the great philosophers of the West have so often appeared in clusters, succeeding one another at relatively brief intervals during periods of especial ferment. 1. After Finitude After Finitude is unusually short for such an influential book of philosophy: running to just 178 pages in the original French, and an even more compact 128 pages in the English version, despite the introduction of roughly eight pages of new material for the English edition. Rather than summarizing Meillassoux’s book in the order he intended, I will focus on six points that strike me as the pillars of his debut book. Along the way, I will offer a few criticisms as well. The first pillar of the book is Meillassoux’s own term “correlationism.”1 Although he introduces this term as the name for an enemy, it is striking that Meillassoux remains impressed by correlationism much more than his fellow speculative realists are. This continued appreciation for his great enemy influences the shape of his own ontology. Is there a world outside our thinking of it, or does the world consist entirely in being thought? Traditionally, this dispute between realism and idealism has been dismissed in continental philosophy as a “pseudo-problem,” in a strategy pioneered by Husserl and extended by Heidegger. We cannot be realists, since following Kant we have no direct access to things-in-themselves. But neither are we idealists, since the human being is always already outside itself, aiming at objects in intentional experience, deeply engaged with practical implements, or stationed in some particular world-disclosing mood. The centuries-old dispute between realism and idealism is dissolved by saying that we cannot think either real or ideal in isolation from the other. There is neither human without world nor world without human, but only a primordial correlation or rapport between the two. This is what “correlationism” means: philosophy trapped in a permanent meditation on the human-world correlate, trying to find the best model of the correlate: is it language, intentionality, embodiment, or some other form of correlation between human and world? Among other problems, this generates some friction between philosophy and the literal meaning of science. When cosmologists say that the universe originated 13.5 billion years ago, they do not mean “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” but literally 13.5 billion years ago, well before conscious life existed, and thus at a time when there was no such thing as a correlate. Meillassoux also coins the term “ancestrality” (10) for the reality that predated the correlate, and later expands this term to “dia-chronicity,” (112) to refer to events occurring after the extinction of human beings no less than to those occurring before we existed. Up to this point, Meillassoux’s focus on ancestral entities existing prior to consciousness might seem like a straightforward realist who wants to unmask correlationism as just another form of idealism. Yet Meillassoux also admires the correlationist maneuver, which can obviously be traced back to Kant. Unlike a thinker such as Whitehead, Meillassoux feels no nostalgia for the pre-critical realism that came before Kant: “we cannot but be heirs of Kantianism,” he says (29). What impresses Meillassoux about correlationism is something both simple and familiar. If we attempt to think a tree outside thought, this is itself a thought . Any form of realism which thinks it can simply and directly address the world the way it is fails to escape the correlational circle, since the attempt to think something outside of thought is itself nothing other than a thought, and thereby collapses back into the very human-world correlate that it pretends to escape. For Meillassoux this step, suggested by Kant but first refined by the ensuing figures of German Idealism, marks decisive forward progress in the history of philosophy that must not be abolished. Any attempt to break free from the correlate must first acknowledge its mighty intellectual power. Realist though he may seem, Meillassoux’s works are filled with praise of such figures as Fichte and Hegel, not of so-called “naïve realists.” It is also the case that for Meillassoux, not all correlationisms are the same. The second pillar of his book is a distinction between various positions that I have termed “Meillassoux’s Spectrum,” though of course he is never so immodest as to name it after himself. He distinguishes between at least six different possible positions, and perhaps we could add even subtler variations if we wished. But in its simplest form, Meillassoux’s Spectrum allows for just four basic outlooks on the question of realism vs. anti-realism. Three of these are easy to understand, since we have already been discussing them. At one extreme is so-called “naïve realism,” which holds that a world exists outside the mind, and that we can know this world. Meillassoux rejects this naïve realism as having been overthrown by Kant’s critical philosophy. At the other extreme is subjective idealism, in which nothing exists outside the mind. For to think a dog outside thought immediately turns it into a thought, and therefore there cannot be anything outside; the very notion is meaningless. In between these two is what we have called correlationism. And here comes a crucial moment for Meillassoux, since he distinguishes between the two forms of “weak” and “strong” correlationism, and chooses the strong form as the launching pad for his own philosophy. Weak correlationism is easy to explain, since we all know it from the philosophy of Kant. The things-in-themselves can be thought but not known. They certainly must exist, since there cannot be appearances without something that appears. And we can think about them, which idealism holds to be impossible. They are simply unknowable due to the finitude of human thought. Strong correlationism is the new position introduced by Meillassoux (though he sees it at work in numerous twentieth century thinkers), midway between weak correlationism and subjective idealism. The major difference between the three positions is as follows. Weak correlationism says: “The things-in-themselves exist, but we cannot know them.” The subjective idealist says: “This is a contradiction in terms, since when we think the things-in-themselves, we already turn them into thoughts.” But the strong correlationist says: “Just because ‘things-in-themselves’ is a meaningless notion does not mean that they cannot exist. No one has ever traveled to the world-in-itself and come back to make a report on it. Thus, the fact that we cannot think things-in-themselves without contradiction does not prove that they do not exist anyway. There may be things-in-themselves, we simply are not capable of thinking them without contradiction form within the correlational circle.” This step is crucial for Meillassoux, since strong correlationism is the position he attempts to radicalize into his own new standpoint: speculative materialism. As I see it, this step of the argument fails. Strong correlationism cannot avoid collapsing into subjective idealism, since the statements of the strong correlationist are rendered meaningless from within. All three of the other positions in the Spectrum make perfectly good sense even for those who disagree with them. The naïve realist says that things-in-themselves exist and we can know them; the meaning of this statement is clear. The weak correlationist can say that things-in-themselves exist but lie forever beyond our grasp; this too makes perfect sense, even though the German Idealists try to show a contradiction at work here. We can also understand the claim of the subjective idealist that to think anything outside thought turns it into a thought, and that for this reason we cannot think the unthought. The strong correlationist, alone among the four, speaks nonsense . This person says “I cannot think the unthought without turning it into a thought, and yet the unthought might exist anyway.” But notice that the final phrase “the unthought might exist anyway” is fruitless for this purpose. For we have already heard that to think any unthought turns it into a thought. But now the strong correlationist wants to do two incompatible things simultaneously with this unthought. On the one hand, he neutralizes the unthought by showing that it instantly changes into just another thought. But on the other hand, he wants to appeal to the unthought as a haunting residue that might exist outside thought, thereby undercutting the absolute status of the human-world correlate found in idealism. But this is impossible. If you accept the argument that thinking the unthought turns it into a thought, you cannot also add “but maybe there is something outside that prevents this conversion from being absolutely true,” because this “something outside” is immediately converted into nothing but a thought for us. In short, Meillassoux here seems to be offering a kind of Zen koan: his “strong correlationism” is reminiscent of the gateless gate, or the sound of one hand clapping, or the command to punch Hegel in the jaw when meeting him on the road. We cannot at the same time both destroy the realist challenge of the things-in-themselves in order to undercut realism and reintroduce that very realist sense in order to undercut idealism. In a world where everything is instantly converted into thought, we cannot claim that there might be something extra-mental anyway, because this “might be something” is itself converted into a thought by the same rules that condemned dogs, trees, and houses to the idealist prison. This brings us to the third pillar of Meillassoux’s argument, which is the key to all the rest: the necessity of contingency. His strategy is to transform our supposed ignorance of things-in-themselves into an absolute knowledge that they exist without reason, and that the laws of nature can change at any time for no reason at all. In this way the cautious agnosticism of Kantian philosophies is avoided, but so is the collapse of reality into thought as found in German Idealism. Meillassoux does try to prove the existence of things-in-themselves existing outside thought; he simply holds that they must be proven after passing through the rigors of the correlationist challenge, not just arbitrarily decreed to exist in the manner of naïve realism. As he puts it, “Everything could actually collapse: from trees to stars, from stars to laws, from physical laws to logical laws; and this not by virtue of some superior law whereby everything is destined to perish, but by virtue of the absence of any superior law capable of preserving anything, no matter what, from perishing” (53). If idealism thinks that the human-world correlate is absolute, for Meillassoux it is the facticity of the correlate that is absolute. He tries to show this with a nice brief dialogue between five separate characters (55-59) which is covered in detail in my forthcoming book,2 but which I will simplify here for reasons of time. In this simplified version, we first imagine a dogmatic realist arguing with a dogmatic idealist. The realist says that we can know the truth about the things-in-themselves; the idealist counters that we can only the truth about thought, since all statements about reality must be turned into statements concerning our thoughts about reality. Here the correlationist enters and proclaims that both of these positions are equally dogmatic. For although we have access to nothing but thoughts, we cannot be sure that these thoughts are all that exist; there could be a reality outside thought, there is simply no way to know for sure. And this latter position is the one that Meillassoux attempts to transform from an agnostic, skeptical point into an ontological claim about the contingency of everything. Consider it this way. How does the correlationist defeat the idealist? The idealist holds that the existence of anything outside thought is impossible. The correlationist, by contrast, holds that something might exist outside the human-world correlate. But this “something might” has to be an absolute possibility. It cannot mean that “something outside thought might exist for thought ,” because that is what the idealist already says. No, the correlationist must mean that something might exist outside thought quite independently of thought. In other words, the correlationist says that idealism might be wrong, and this means it is absolutely true that idealism might be wrong. Thus, correlationism is no longer just a skeptical position. It holds that all the possibilities of the world are absolute possibilities. We have absolute knowledge that any of the possibilities about the existence or non-existence of things-in-themselves might be true, and this means that correlationism flips into Meillassoux’s own position: speculative materialism. As Meillassoux sees it, there are only two options here. Option A is to absolutize the human-world correlate, which is what the idealist does: there absolutely cannot be anything outside thought. Option B, by contrast, is to absolutize the facticity of the correlate: its character of simply being given to us, without any inherent necessity. The correlationist cannot have it both ways by saying: “there absolutely might be something outside thought, yet maybe this is absolutely impossible.” In other words, once we escape dogmatism we can only be idealists or speculative materialists, not correlationists. The human-world correlate is merely a fact, not an absolute necessity. But this facticity itself cannot be merely factical: it must be absolute. Here Meillassoux coins the French neologism factualité , which has been suitably translated into the English neologism “factiality.” (7, 122-3) Factialty means that for everything that exists, it is absolutely possible that it might be otherwise, not just that we cannot know whether or not it might be otherwise. Just as Kant transformed philosophy into a meditation on the categories governing human finitude, Meillassoux wishes to turn philosophy into a meditation on the necessary conditions of factiality, which he calls “figures”—a new technical term for him. (80) One such figure is that the law of non-contradiction must be true, and for an unusual reason. Since everything is proven to be contingent, nothing that exists can be contradictory, for whatever is contradictory has no opposite into which it might be transformed, and thus contingency would be impossible.3 Another such figure is that there must be something rather than nothing: for since contingency exists, something must exist in order to be contingent. It is a daring high-wire act, one that sacrifices realism to the correlational circle in order to rebuild it from out of its own ashes. Some might conclude that the lack of reason in things is a byproduct of the ignorance of finite humans, Meillassoux is making precisely the opposite point. For in fact, the doctrine of finitude usually leads directly to belief in a hidden reason. The fact that it lies beyond human comprehension merely increases our belief in this arbitrarily chosen concealed ground. By defending anew the concept of absolute knowledge Meillassoux evacuates the world of everything hidden. The reason for things having no reason is not that the reason is hidden, but that no reason exists. Thus, even while insisting on the necessity of non-contradiction, he rejects the other Leibnizian principle: sufficient reason. Everything simply is what it is, in purely immanent form, without deeply hidden causes. Or as Meillassoux puts it: “There is nothing beneath or beyond the manifest gratuitousness of the given—nothing but the limitless and lawless power of its destruction, emergence, or persistence” (63).The world is a “hyper-chaos”(64). But this is not the same thing as flux. For the chaos of the world is such that stability might occur just as easily as constant, turbulent change. Let’s now digress a bit, and return to the question of ancestrality, which Meillassoux transforms later in the book into “dia-chronicity.” Correlationism holds that all talk of a world outside the correlate is immediately recuperated by the correlate. The phrase “13.5 billion years ago” becomes “13.5 billion years ago for us ,” and the phrase “the universe following the extinction of humans” becomes “the universe following the extinction of humans for humans .” But notice that whether we talk about the world before or after humans, in both cases it is time that is used to challenge the correlate. Meillassoux has no interest in challenges that might be posed by space. For example, what about a vase in a lonely country house that topples to the floor and smashes when no one is there to watch it? Isn’t this also a challenge to correlationism, no less than the Big Bang or the heat death of the universe long after humans have vanished? In an eight-page supplement to the English translation of After Finitude ,4 possibly in response to my own 2007 review of the French original,5 Meillassoux bluntly denies that space is of any relevance to the question. Spatial distance is a merely harmless challenge to the human-world correlate. After all, even though no one is there in the lonely country house to witness the shattering of the vase, we can say that had there been an observer , that observer would have witnessed the toppling and destruction of the vase. For this event still occurs in a world in which the human-world correlate already exists, whereas the diachronicity of events both before and after the existence of humans makes it impossible to say that had there been an observer they would have witnessed the Big Bang occurring in such and such a fashion. However, it seems to me that Meillassoux merely asserts that the temporal simultaneity of our existence with that of the vase in the lonely country house is enough to render it harmless. It is true that the house does not exist prior to the correlate, but nonetheless it exists outside the correlate, and that is enough to make the same challenge. It is difficult to see why the “had there been an observer” maneuver succeeds in the case of a vase in the countryside in April 2011 but fails in the case of the Big Bang. This is not just a matter of nitpicking Meillassoux’s argumentative style: the fact that he bases his argument on time has at least two important consequences for his position. For in the first place, even though Meillassoux insists that the laws of nature are absolutely contingent, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense. That is to say, it is a paradoxical feature of Meillassoux’s philosophy that he does allow for the existence of laws of nature, and simply believes that they can change at any moment without reason. Within any given moment, laws of nature do exist. He never suggests that different parts of the universe can have different laws at the same time, nor does he have any interest in the laws of part/whole composition that take place within any given instant. Could it be the case that rather than being made of gold atoms, a small chunk of gold could be made of silver atoms, cotton, horses, or that this same small piece of gold could be made of gigantic vaults filled with even more gold? These are not topics that draw Meillassoux’s attention, since he is focused solely on how the laws of nature might change or endure from one moment to the next . Another implication for Meillassoux’s system is that his concept of things-in-themselves turns out to be to be inadequate. For when he proves that things-in-themselves can exist without humans, this turns out to be true only in a temporal sense as well. Namely, things-in-themselves existed ten billion years ago, and they will continue to exist after all humans have succeeded in exterminating themselves. However, being able to exist before our births and after our deaths is just one small part of what it means to be a thing-in-itself. The more important part is that even if a thing is sitting on a table right now, in front of me, even if I stroke it lovingly or press my face up against it directly, I am still dealing only with a phenomenal version of the thing; the thing-in-itself continues to withdraw from all access. Yet no such thing is acknowledged by Meillassoux. For him finitude is a disaster, and absolute knowledge is in fact possible. Meillassoux’s thing-in-itself exists in independence only of the human lifespan , not of human knowledge. The fifth pillar of Meillassoux’s argument is his use of Cantor’s transfinite mathematics to show that even if the laws of nature are contingent, they need not be unstable, and thus we cannot use the apparent stability of nature to disprove his metaphysics of absolute contingency. What Cantor showed is that there are different sizes of infinity, and that all these infinities cannot be totalized in a single infinite number of infinities. Meillassoux sees this as crucial, since it allows him to discredit any “probabilistic” argument against his theory. The probabilistic argument (as defended quite clearly by Jean-René Vernes)6 would say this: given that the laws of nature seem so stable, it it is extremely improbable that there is no hidden reason for their remaining so stable. As Meillassoux sees it, probability is of value only when we can index an accessible total of cases. These can even be infinite: for example, there are an infinite number of points where a rope can break when stretched tight, but this does not stop us from calculating probabilities for various sections of the rope to break. By contrast, there is no way to sum up the number of possible laws of nature. For here there is no way to totalize; we cannot stand outside of nature and calculate the possible number of laws so as to determine the probabilities that any one of them might change. Therefore, although we can speak of probability when dealing with intraworldly events such as elections, horse races, and coin-flips, we cannot use the words “probable” or “improbable” when describing alterations at the level of nature as a whole. Rather than commenting on the validity of this argument and its use of Cantor, let me simply note that it once again creates a dualistic ontology. We already saw that Meillassoux treats time differently from space. In analogous fashion, he now treats the level of world differently from that of intraworldly events. The emergence of worlds is purely contingent and virtual and governed by no probability at all, while events within the world necessarily follow laws (even if these laws can change at any moment without reason), and thus their probabilities can be calculated. It is a strategy deeply reminiscent of Badiou’s (2005) own dualism between the normal “state of the situation” and the rare and intermittent “event.” The sixth and final pillar of Meillassoux’s book can be dealt with briefly, since we have already touched on it elsewhere. It comes at the very beginning of the book, when Meillassoux says that we must revive the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and that the primary qualities are the ones that can be mathematized. He admits that he has not yet published a proof of this idea, though in fact it is already known as one of his primary doctrines. And here we encounter the familiar problem with Meillassoux’s inadequate conception of things-in-themselves. “Primary qualities” refers to those qualities that a thing has independently of its relations with us or anything else. But if the primary qualities can be mathematized, this means that they are not entirely independent of us, since our knowledge can get right to the bottom of them. The mathematized qualities of things are independent of us only in Meillassoux’s sense that they will still have those qualities even when all humans are dead. But to repeat, autonomy from the human lifespan is not the same as autonomy from human access. Here once more Meillassoux is concerned only with independence from the human-world correlate across time, not in any given instant. 2. L’Inexistence divine In 1997, the same year in which he turned thirty years old, Meillassoux earned his doctorate at the École normale supériuere with a brazen dissertation entitled L’Inexistence divine ( The Divine Inexistence ). The work was substantially revised in 2003. But even then, with typical fastidiousness, Meillassoux decided that the work was not yet ready for press. It has now been scrapped in favor of some future, multi-volume work bearing the same title. While writing my book on Meillassoux for Edinburgh University Press, I was permitted to translate excerpts from this unpublished work for use as an appendix in my own book; in total, the appendix contains approximately twenty percent of Meillassoux’s 2003 manuscript, the first time any of it will be published in any language. Nonetheless, a portion of the argument was already tested in the article “Spectral Dilemma,” published in English in the journal Collapse (2008: 261-75). There the philosophical motives for the virtual God are already made clear. What troubles us most are early deaths, brutal deaths, deaths of especial injustice– the sorts of deaths in which the brutal twentieth century was so abundant. And here, neither the atheist nor the believer can help us. The atheist can offer nothing but a sad and cynical resignation when reflecting on the victims of these terrible crimes. The believer does little better, being unable to explain how God could have allowed such things to happen, due to the famous intractability of the problem of evil. The solution offered to this dilemma by Meillassoux is bold, and all the more so given that he emerges from such a deeply Leftist, materialist, and unreligious background. His solution is that God does not yet exist, and therefore is not blameworthy for these catastrophes. Given that everything is contingent in Meillassoux’s philosophy, this God and divine justice might never exist, but they can at least exist as an object of hope. Let’s begin by jumping to the end of L’Inexistence divine , where the alternatives are laid out so nicely. There are four basic attitudes that humans can have towards God, Meillassoux says. First, we can believe in God because he exists. This is the classical theist attitude, rejected for the simple reason that it would be amoral and blasphemous to believe in a God who allows children to be eaten by dogs, to use Dostoevsky’s example. Second, we can disbelieve in God because he does not exist: the classical atheist attitude. But this leads to sadness, cynicism, and a sneering contempt for the greatness of human capacity. The third option, rather more complex, is to disbelieve in God because he does exist: in other words, to exist in rebellion against God as the one who must be blamed for the evils of the earth. The examples here might range from Lucifer himself, to the more human figure of Captain Ahab in Melville’s Moby-Dick , to Werner Herzog’s even more recent catchphrase, “Every man for himself, and God against all.” That leaves only the fourth option: believing in God because he does not exist. Meillassoux closes his book by saying that the fourth option has now been tried (namely, in the course of his own book), and that now that all four have been specified, we must choose. The first reaction to this theory of the inexistent God will be laughter. Few readers will ever be literally convinced by it, and probably none will immediately be convinced by it. But if we ask ourselves why we laugh, the answer is because it sounds so improbable that an inexistent God might suddenly emerge and resurrect the dead. It obviously sounds more like a gullible theology than a rigorous piece of philosophical work. Yet two things need to be kept in mind. First, Meillassoux’s theories are hardly more unlikely than those of great philosophers of the past such as Plato, Plotinus, Avicenna, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, or Whitehead. We read the great philosophers not because their systems are plausible in commonsense terms that can be measured by the laws of probability. Instead, we read them precisely because they shatter the existing framework of common sense and open up new window on the universe. Second, and even more importantly, Meillassoux has already rejected probability as a valid measuring stick in philosophy. Or rather, he accepts probability in the intra-worldly realm (where it is linked with potentiality), and rejects it at the level of the world itself (where potentiality is replaced with what he calls virtuality). The virtual God can appear at any moment for no reason at all, just as any other new configuration of laws of nature can appear: in a manner that the laws of probability cannot calculate. Responding to those who might ridicule the idea of a sudden emergence of God and a resurrection of the dead, Meillassoux cites Pascal, who asserts that the resurrection of the dead would be far less incredible than the fact that we were born in the first place. This shifts philosophy onto new ground. Rather than concerning ourselves with what is likely to happen in the world as we know it, we focus instead on the most important things that could happen. For this reason, the expected objection that a virtual God is no more likely to appear than a virtual unicorn or a virtual flying spaghetti monster misses the point. Unicorns and spaghetti monsters could also appear, just like any other non-contradictory thing. But these would just be novel bizarre entities among others, not the heralds of completely new worlds. For Meillassoux, the emergence of matter, life, and thought have been the three truly amazing advents of the world so far, each of them dependent on the advent(s) preceding them. As he sees it, there can be no greater intraworldly entity than the human beings who already exist, since nothing in the world is better than the absolute knowledge of which humans alone are capable. This means that the next great advent must be something that perfects human beings rather than superseding them. And this can only be the world of justice, in which the dead are resurrected and their horrible deaths partially cancelled (Meillassoux never considers the possibility of a God who would literally erase the pre-divine past so that it never happened at all). The only immortality worth having is an immortality of this life, not an existence in some ill-defined afterworld. Human existence, he holds, must always be governed by a “symbol” that gives us the “immanent and comprehensible inscription of values in a world.” And just as cosmic history made the three great contingent leaps of matter, life, and thought, with a leap to justice as the only one still to come, a similar structure occurs within human culture and its symbols, which consist so far of the cosmological, naturalistic, and historical symbols, with a “factial” symbol still to come. We can review each of these symbols briefly. The cosmological symbol refers to the ancient dualism between the terrestrial and celestial spheres. Here below everything is conflict, corruption, and decay; but in the heavens nothing is perishable, all movement is circular, and everything is arranged in mutual harmony. This symbol is ended by modern physics when Galileo discovers such blemishes as sunspots and craters on the moon, and when Newton integrates both celestial and terrestrial movement into a single gravitational law. Next comes the naturalistic or romantic symbol, in which perfection comes not from the sky but from nature itself. The world is filled with pretty flowers (Meillassoux claims that the ancients never discussed the beauty of flowers until Plotinus in the third century) and with living creatures naturally moved by pity, at least until society corrupts them. This symbol collapses in the face of reality as we know it, since pity is no more common than war, corruption, and violence. This brings us to the historical symbol, which only now is passing away. Bad things may happen, but history has an inner logic of its own, such that everything works out in the end. The ultimate form of the historical symbol is the economic symbol, whether in a Marxist or neo-liberal form. Just as the Marxist holds that the inner economic logic of the capitalists will inexorably lead them to self-destruction, the neo-liberal assumes that the sum total of individual selfish actions will lead, in the long run, to the greatest possible good. We worship the economy and let it guide history for us, just as the ancients worshipped celestial bodies and held them to be free from blemish. The final remaining symbol is the factial symbol, which Meillassoux hopes will now emerge. Factiality, we recall, is his term for the absolute contingency of everything that exists. Once we have grasped this absolute contingency, we are free to expect the dramatic advent of the coming fourth World: the world of justice, inaugurated by a virtual God and even mediated by a messianic human figure. There is the added feature, however, that this messiah must abandon all claims to special status once the messianic realm of justice is achieved. The messianic figure will then be no more special than any person on the street, since a reign of human equality will have arisen. Although this focus on human being might seem like a return to standard humanism, Meillassoux holds that human pre-eminence has never truly been maintained. Previously, humans have been treated as special only because they contemplate the Good, because they resemble their omnipotent creator, or because they happen to be the temporary victors in a cruel Darwinian death-match between millions of living species. For Meillassoux, by contrast, humans have value because they know the eternal. But it is not the eternal that is important, since this merely represents the blind, anonymous contingency of each thing. What is important is not knowledge of the eternal , but knowledge of the eternal. We should not admire Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods; Prometheus is simply as bad as all the gods, no matter how much he increased our power. Feuerbach and Marx were wrong to say that God is a projection of the human essence, since for Meillassoux the usual concept of God represents the degradation of the human essence. If the traditional God was allowed to inflict plagues and tsunamis on the human race, the Promethean human of the twentieth century simply assumes the right to inflict death camps and atomic fireballs instead. In this respect, we have simply begun to imitate the degradation of humanity that was formerly invested in an omnipotent and arbitrary God. In response to charges that absolute contingency might lead to political quietism, Meillassoux counters that the World of justice would mean nothing unless we had already hoped for it beforehand. A World of justice that came along at random would merely be an improved third World of thought: indeed, a perfect one. But it would have satisfied no craving, and would therefore have no redemptive power. For this reason, we must actively hope for the fourth World of justice for such a fourth World ever to arise. Not only justice, but beauty is dependent on such hope: for Meillassoux, who is here somewhat dependent on Kant, beauty means an accord between our human symbolization and the actual world, which could never be present in a World of the blessed any more than justice could. And just as a messianic figure is needed to incarnate our hope and then abandon power once the World of justice is realized, it is the figure of the child whose fragile contingency shows us a dignity and a demand for justice beyond all power. 3. Meillassoux Radicalized or Reversed Given the promising reception of Meillassoux’s first book, it would not be groundless to engage in early speculation about what it might take to earn him a place in the history of philosophy. Maybe this will never happen—who knows?—but quite possibly it will: his lucid argumentative methods and sheer philosophical imagination at least make him a good candidate to be read well into the future, especially following further elaboration in print of his mature system. Philosophy is often practiced as thought it were nothing more than the amassing of “knockdown arguments.” But this is no more insightful than saying that good architecture is the amassing of steal beams. It is true that poorly constructed building cannot stand for long, but sound construction is merely the first, indispensable step in building. In fact, I am inclined to say that what really makes a philosopher important is not being right, but being wrong . I mean this in a very specific sense. I once heard the interesting remark about twentieth century culture that “you have to remember that the sixties really happened in the seventies.” That is to say, it was in the 1970’s rather than the more honored 1960’s that civil rights, free love, long hair, and the rock and roll drug culture really took root. With respect to the history of philosophy, we might just as easily say: “you have to remember that Plato really happened in Aristotle,” that “Kant really happened in Hegel” or “Hume really happened in Kant,” or that “Husserl’s phenomenology first achieved its truth in Heidegger.” One becomes an important philosopher not by being right, but by attracting rebellious admirers who tell you that you are wrong , even as their own careers silently orbit around your own. To recruit faithful disciples may be comforting and flattering, but the greatest thinkers have generally had to experience refutation at the hands of their most talented heirs. For this reason, I would propose that we size up the magnitude of living thinkers not by deciding how many times they are right and wrong, but by asking instead: who would take the trouble to refute this author? For this reason I do not ask: “Is Meillassoux right?”, since I do not believe in the virtual God myself, nor am I convinced by any important aspect of Meillassoux’s philosophy. Instead, I ask if there are interesting ways to overturn him. Only by being overturned, by no longer remaining a contemporary, does one become a classic. Let’s begin with a simple model of refutation, which can be refined further at a later date once the basic point is established. One kind of refutation simply consists in saying: “This author is a complete idiot.” The refuter now walks away in celebration, and no link between the present and the future is built; all is reduced to rubble. But this sort of mediocre triumphalism is generally practiced by those who achieve little of their own, and is not especially interesting. Much more interesting is the sort of refutation that does not take its target to be a complete idiot. I would like to suggest that there are just two basic ways in which this can be done: radicalization and reversal . It has not escaped my notice that this is a fairly good match for the Deleuzian distinction between irony and humor. Whereas irony critiques and adopts the opposite principle of what it attacks, humor accepts what it confronts but pushes it into highly exaggerated form. The ironist is like the worker who sows chaos by rebeling and contradicting the boss, while the humorist is like the worker who follows orders to an absurdly literal degree, with equally chaotic results. Let’s start with a few examples. In Aristotle’s treatment of Plato, and Heidegger’s of Husserl, we find reversal. Plato’s eidei are transformed by Aristotle into mere secondary substances, and the individual worldly things despised by Plato become what is primary. For Husserl what is primary is whatever is present to consciousness, while for Heidegger this is precisely what is secondary, since the primary stuff of the world withdraws from any form of presence at all. As for radicalization, it is most easily found in the transformation of Kant by German Idealism: “Kant was right to wall off the things-in-themselves from human access, and simply should have realized that the thought of the Ding an sich is also a thought, and thereby the noumena are just special cases of the phenomena,” with much following from this discovery. It would also be easy to read Spinoza as a radicalizer of Descartes, and Berkeley and Hume as radicalized versions of Locke. Perhaps the distinction is now sufficiently clear. Admiring refutations are not those that say “Professor X is an idiot,” which is merely the flip side of the eager disciple’s fruitless “Professor X got everything right.” Instead, it will be some variant of one of the following two options: “Professor X is important, but got it backwards,” or “Professor X is important, but didn’t push things far enough.” In the history of philosophy these two latter cases have often been painful in purely human terms: Aristotle expresses sadness at refuting Plato, Kant is openly annoyed at Fichte, and Husserl feels betrayed and used by Heidegger. Rude handling from later figures almost seems to be the sine qua non of being a great philosopher. Now, it has already been claimed that Meillassoux is an emerging philosopher of the first importance, and by no less a figure than Alain Badiou: “It would be no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy…” (Preface, vii). But rather than taking Badiou’s word for it, or rejecting his word, we might experiment by asking how Meillassoux could be radicalized or reversed. Are there interesting ways of doing this that might launch whole new schools of philosophy, unexpected or even condemned by Meillassoux himself? While no one can see the future, the present is poor when it is not riddled with virtual futures. The relation between philosophers and their predecessors and successors is always somewhat complicated, of course. But generally there is one central divergence at stake, which might be taken as the key to all the others. On this basis we could say that new thinkers primarily radicalize or primarily reverse the main ideas of their chief philosophical forerunner. There may be specific historical conditions and perhaps even personality traits connected with these two types, but this question can be left aside for now. More important for us is that radicalizers will generally be followed by reversers, and vice versa. Consider the textbook example of a reversal in the history of philosophy: Kant’s Copernican Revolution, which inverts the so-called dogmatic tradition that addresses the world itself, and makes the world revolve instead around the conditions by which it is known. While it is not completely impossible that Kant’s successors might have re-reversed this principle back into a new and stronger dogmatic realism, conditions were premature for such a move. Anyone doing this too early would likely have been an angry anti-Kantian reactionary rather than an original thinker in command of a genuinely new realist principle. The far more likely outcome is the one that actually happened: Kant’s reversal of his predecessors was viewed as incomplete, or as retaining lamentable bits of the traditional view, which despite his admirable breakthrough he was unable to shake off. This was the view of German Idealism, anyway. In similar fashion, Spinoza could also be viewed as a radicalizer of Descartes, who is equally accused of preserving various Scholastic dogmas in an otherwise radical project of philosophical reversal. The point is this: reversals in the history of thought tend to be followed soon thereafter by radicalizations of those reversals. The same may hold true in reverse: radicalizations might generally be followed by reversals, given that it is not always possible to be more radical than the radicals have already been. Consider the case of Husserl, who radicalizes Brentano’s early vagueness about what lies beyond immanent objectivity, and Twardowski’s assertion that there must be an external object lying outside the intentional content, by collapsing everything into the intentional sphere: there is no difference between the Berlin in my consciousness and the actual Berlin that is home to millions of people. It is difficult to see how one could be even more radical than Husserl’s idealist turn here. And thus the road is paved to Heidegger’s reversal of classical phenomenology, in which the key point is what lies deeper than any presence to consciousness: the Sein whose power and obscurity cannot be made exhaustively present, but only sends itself in historical epochs. In similar fashion we might also read Leibniz as a reverser of Spinoza’s radicalization, retrieving a strong sense of individual substance and a certain validity of what the Scholastics had said. Returning to Meillassoux, we might ask which kind of philosopher he is: a radicalizer or a reverser? At present, Meillassoux looks to me like a radicalizer (though for now his future remains shrouded in mist). He takes the correlationist tradition, which allows us to speak only of the relation between human and world, and tries to raise it into an even more extreme claim about the absolute contingency of everything. But whereas German Idealism did this by trying to collapse the distinction between thought and world entirely into the “thought” side, Meillassoux does it by trying to shift the non-absolute contingency of the thought-world correlate from epistemology to ontology. It is no longer a question of the inability of human knowledge to know what lies outside the correlate, but the inability of reality itself to be rooted in any definite laws. Furthermore, if we look at the various features of Meillassoux’s philosophy identified earlier tonight, all but one are already so radical that there is no obvious way to push them further. The one exception would be his claim that the world as a whole can change for no reason at any moment, coupled with the inconsistent claim that within a given world there are laws of nature that everything must follow. If gravitational attraction between all masses is a current law in our world, then for Meillassoux there can be no exceptions to this law for as long as it remains in force. A toppled vase will fall to the floor every time for sure,unless there is a cosmic change by which the laws of nature as a whole have altered. (This is reminiscent of the late medieval distinction between the absolute and ordained power of God, according to which God has the power to set or change the laws of nature, but not to contravene those laws locally once they are set.) On this point, to radicalize Meillassoux would simply be to say: there are no laws of nature even in the local sense. Everything that happens, even in the world here and now, is purely contingent and not governed by even a trace of law. And while this would be a more consistent development of Meillassoux’s thoughts on contingency, it is difficult to see how it could lead to a new philosophy. Instead, the admiring successors of Meillassoux are more likely to reverse one of his already sufficiently radical points. At least four candidates come to mind: *First, we have seen that Meillassoux thinks correlationism is challenged by a time before or after consciousness, but not by a space lying outside it. Perhaps this could be reversed into saying that spatial exteriority is the really crucial point. The arguments on this point are perhaps the least convincing in After Finitude (and do not even occur in the original French edition), and therefore it might be a candidate for the “blind spot” of which no philosopher is ever free. *Second, Meillassoux uses Cantor to claim that the contingency of laws of nature would not entail that they are unstable. A successor of Meillassoux might claim that it does make them unstable, and celebrate this fact. This person would then have to explain why common sense seems to encounter a relatively stable world despite its truly rampant instability. Whereas Meillassoux’s problem is to show how stability might exist despite contingency, this successor’s problem would be slightly different: to show why actual, full-blown instability might have the appearance of stability. *Third, Meillassoux claims that the primary qualities of things are those that can be mathematized. He might be reversed by a successor who says the opposite: the mathematizable qualities are the secondary ones, and the primary ones are those that elude symbolic formulation. While this is a perfectly valid possible objection to Meillassoux, it is one that is made in advance by some of his predecessors and is still made by some of his peers, making it less interesting for futurology than some of his other points. *Fourth and finally, whereas Meillassoux claims that God does not exist but might exist in the future, a successor might argue even more bizarrely that God has always existed but might vanish in the future. Let’s arbitrarily select the first of these possibilities, and imagine briefly where it might lead, if pursued in the future by admiring detractors. Meillassoux comes from the circle of Badiou, and some of Badiou’s most ardent admirers are found in Latin America. So, let’s imagine that towards mid-century some ingenious reversers of Meillassoux emerge in that portion of the Spanish-speaking world. Just for fun, let’s call them Castro and Chávez. And in order to avoid any confusion with the present-day politicians of those names, we will stipulate that Meillassoux’s great successors are both women. The philosopher Castro (we will suppose she comes from Peru) reverses Meillassoux’s argument that the ancestral or diachronic are what most threaten the human-world correlate. Instead, she claims that the diachronic does not threaten the correlate at all, and that we must instead look at space as what ruins the correlate and demands a strange new realism. What would such a philosophy look like? In order to determine this, we might ask what price Meillassoux pays for doing it the opposite way. As I see it, he pays in two separate ways. One is that laws of nature for him are contingent over time . The laws of nature apply to the universe as a whole at any given moment, and would be changed globally if they are ever changed at all. The second price he pays is that Meillassoux has no mereology , or theory of parts and wholes. Everything for him is on the level of the given, or immanent in experience, with the sole proviso that the laws governing this immanence might change without notice at any given moment. In reversing Meillassoux, Castro makes the following claims in the preface to her stunning debut book of 2045, The Cosmos and its Neighborhoods , rapidly translated from Spanish into all the languages of the world: Despite his brilliant analysis of the contingency of laws of nature over time, Meillassoux gets two important assumptions wrong. First, he allows for only one set of contingent laws to govern nature as a whole. Second, he allows laws to govern only the world that is immanent in experience, and thereby fails to explore the contingency among part-whole relations. In this book I will argue, first, that the laws of nature vary in any given instant between one region of the universe and the next; and second, that the world is made up of layers of parts and wholes that are also contingent with respect to one another. Those are the words of Castro. This may sound like a hopeless free-for-all of chaos, yet the book somehow succeeds in drawing some compelling deductions about how laws must vary from one place or level in the world to the next. Trapped in the limited horizon of 2011, and not yet inspired by the heavily balkanized political and technological situation of 2050 that somehow lends additional credence to Castro’s vision, we can only vaguely grasp what such a philosophy might look like. After this reversal of Meillassoux by Castro, the usual pattern leads us to expect a radicalization by Chávez, a young Argentine student of Castro. How could the already strange theories of Castro be radicalized? Perhaps as follows, in a disturbing new book entitled The Implosion of the Neighborhoods , which argues as follows: Castro was right to shift the Meillassouxian framework of contingency from time to space. However, in this respect she retained a surprisingly traditional opposition between the two. In this book I will show that time and space collapse into one another. This may sound too much like the discredited four-dimensional block universe of twentieth century physics and philosophy. However, the four-dimensional universe is a model biased in favor of space, merely adding an extra dimension to the commonsense spatial continuum while stipulating that the serial passage of time is an illusion. In this book I will argue instead for a one-dimensional space-time modeled after our experience of time, in which there is no simultaneous co-existence at all between different parts of the universe, or ‘neighborhoods’ as my esteemed teacher Castro has called them. Instead, the various portions of the universe link to one another by succession rather than by coexistence. Buenos Aires, New York, and Amsterdam do not exist simultaneously in the same landscape, but one after the other in the mind of some observer, and this observer can only be an observer much larger than any human. Against Meillassoux’s notion of a virtual God that does not exist now but might exist in the future, I will argue for an actual God that surveys the universe in sequence, thereby generating the illusion of spatial diversity and even the illusion of individual minds located within that diversity. Once this divine observer dies, the universe as a whole must perish. Again, these ideas are so bizarre that we of 2011 can barely comprehend them, just as Aristotle would have had a difficult time grasping the theories of Descartes. We could then perhaps imagine a further reversal of this theory, emanating from the intellectually resurgent Philippines of the twenty-second century. The Filipino School might argue that the universe is already dead, given the collapse of its spatial richness into the serial observations of a flimsy and mortal God. The virtual universe does not yet exist, but might exist in fully spatial form in the future, and this would require the death of God and the resulting liberation of God’s succession of images as independent, spatially situated realities. With a bit of sharpening, we might be able to make all of these imaginary thinkers more intuitively clear. Along with the history of philosophy, there might arise a new discipline generating imaginary futures for philosophy. The richness of Meillassoux’s system comes not from the fact that he is plausibly right about so many things, but because his philosophy offers such a treasury of bold statements ripe for being radicalized or reversed. He is a rich target for many still-unborn intellectual heirs, and this is what gives him the chance to be an important figure. NOTES 1. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude . Trans. R Brassier. (London: Continuum, 2008.) Page 5. The word “correlationism” does not appear in his doctoral thesis. As Meillassoux informed me in an email of February 8, 2011, he first coined this term in 2003 or 2004, while editing for publication a lecture he had given at the École normale supérieure on a day devoted to the theme of “Philosophy and Mathematics,” an event including Alain Badiou as one of the participants. 2. Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making . (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2011). 3. In an email of December 6, 2010, Meillassoux clarifies that in After Finitude he only deduces the impossibility of a “universal contradiction,” not of a determinate contradiction. In the same email he suggests that he can also prove the latter, though the proof is somewhat lengthier than the one found in After Finitude . 4. After Finitude (18-26), in the passage falling between the two sets of triple asterisks. These pages were sent by Meillassoux to translator Ray Brassier (in French) during the translation process, and do not appear in the original French version of the book. 5. Graham Harman, “Quentin Meillassoux: A New French Philosopher.” Philosophy Today 51.1 (2007): Pages 104-117. The passage where I raise the question of space can be found in the first column of page 107. 6. Vernes is first cited on p. 95 of After Finitude . See Jean-René Vernes, Critique de la raison aléatoire, ou Descartes contra Kant . (Paris: Aubier, 1982).  . (shrink)

Recent developments in virtual reality technology raise a question about the experience of presence and immersion in virtual environments. What is immersion and what are the conditions for inducing the experience of virtual presence? In this paper, we argue that crucial determinants of presence are perception of affordances and sense of embodiment. In the first section of this paper, we define key concepts and introduce important distinctions such as immersion and presence. In the (...) second and third sections, we respectively discuss presence, immersion and their determinants in detail. In the fourth and fifth sections, we argue for the importance of perception of affordances and sense of embodiment in increasing the degree of presence. Finally, we show the consequences of our view and discuss possible future implications. (shrink)

BackgroundAttention deficit hyperactivity disorder is clinically diagnosed; however, quantitative analysis to statistically analyze the symptom severity of children with ADHD via the measurement of head movement is still in progress. Studies focusing on the cues that may influence the attention of children with ADHD in classroom settings, where children spend a considerable amount of time, are relatively scarce. Virtual reality allows real-life simulation of classroom environments and thus provides an opportunity to test a range of theories in a (...) naturalistic and controlled manner. The objective of this study was to investigate the correlation between participants’ head movements and their reports of inattention and hyperactivity, and to investigate how their head movements are affected by different social cues of different sensory modalities.MethodsThirty-seven children and adolescents with and without ADHD were recruited for this study. All participants were assessed for diagnoses, clinical symptoms, and self-reported symptoms. A virtual reality-continuous performance test was conducted under four conditions: control, no-cue, visual cue, and visual/audio cue. A quantitativecomparison of the participants’ head movements was conducted in three dimensions using a head-mounted display in a VR classroom environment. Task-irrelevant head movements were analyzed separately, considering the dimension of movement needed to perform the VR-CPT.ResultsThe magnitude of head movement, especially task-irrelevant head movement, significantly correlated with the current standard of clinical assessment in the ADHD group. Regarding the four conditions, head movement showed changes according to the complexity of social cues in both the ADHD and healthy control groups.ConclusionChildren and adolescents with ADHD showed decreasing task-irrelevant movements in the presence of social stimuli toward the intended orientation. As a proof-of-concept study, this study preliminarily identifies the potential of VR as a tool to understand and investigate the classroom behavior of children with ADHD in a controlled, systematic manner. (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)

It is widely accepted that embodiment is crucial for any self-aware agent. What is less obvious is whether the body has to be real, or whether a virtual body will do. In that case the notion of embodiment would be so attenuated as to be almost indistinguishable from disembodiment. In this article I concentrate on the notion of embodiment in human agents. Could we be disembodied, having no real body, as brains-in-a-vat with only a virtual body? (...) Thought experiments alone will not suffice to answer this Cartesian question. I will draw on both philosophical arguments and empirical data on phantom phenomena. My argument will proceed in three steps. Firstly I will show that phantom phenomena provide a prima facie argument that real embodiment is not necessary for a human being. Secondly I will give a philosophical argument that real movement must precede the intention to move and to act. Agents must at least have had real bodies once. Empirical data seems to bear this out. Finally, however, I will show that a small number of aplasic phantom phenomena undermines this last argument. Most people must have had a real body. But for some people a partly virtual, unreal, phantom body seems to suffice. Yet though there is thus no knockdown argument that we could not be brains-in-a-vat, we still have good reasons to suppose that embodiment must be real, and not virtual. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Heuretics: The Logic of InventionTom ConleyHeuretics: The Logic of Invention, by Gregory L. Ulmer; xiv & 267 pp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, $40.00 cloth, $13.95 paper.Heuretics designates areas of logic devoted to discovery and invention. This book sets out to reconfigure the metaphors that have dominated investigation since the advent of print-culture and the Columbian voyages. Adventure, quest, risk, discovery: Francis Bacon’s analogy of scientific research (...) to oceanic travel established the stereotypes that Ulmer strives to dismantle. In 1962 Claude Lévi-Strauss noted in The Raw and the Cooked that in our time: “It is no longer a question of sailing toward other lands: only the voyage is real, not the earth, and the routes have been replaced by the rules of navigation.” With the advent of hypermedia, creation becomes an art of selection and combination. Truth gives way to discovery. Creation is likened to a programmed mélange of material ordered by negotiation, intuition, and strategy.Ulmer performs his proof—and proves his performance—by constructing a virtual staging of a multilayered commemoration he fashions from cinema, architecture, Jacques Derrida’s oeuvre, American history, and autobiography. The result is a collage of signifiers that apposes literary theory, memory-arts, Gary Cooper’s persona in Beau Geste (dir. William Wellman, 1939), Columbian voyages, Platonic dialogues, and a canon of postmodern writings. Ulmer divides the book into four parts, the first of which crafts the overall method from Cartesian reason and Surrealist practices of juxtaposition and automatism. Part two offers a dynamic definition of choreography, the study of local, inherited, and originary areas in which subjectivity is born. In part three Ulmer [End Page 147] sets forth textual rehearsals, based on Lee Strasner’s Method (via Stanislavsky), that mobilize the space and time of his chosen materials. Part four, “Yellowstone Desert,” bring together the strands of the narrative embroidery into a gag-joke (a “puncept” on Custer and custard) that explodes in the author’s face.A good deal of the work turns on Ulmer’s treatment of chora. Exploiting its signifying potential (chora, corps, choral, chorus, coral) he discovers that the myth of the world’s creation recounted in the Timaeus begins when the demiurge makes an X from two strands of plasma. The chi is folded as colures of a sphere that becomes the globe. Nonetheless the presence of the self as an unknown (x) is inferred (in I, or ich). Ulmer shows that “in subordinating mystery to memory, and arguments to paradigms,” choreography will “engage the users’ premises in the process of learning, opening a mutually transforming circuit between judgment and theory, and hence affect not only (...) institutional practices (...) but human subjectivation as well” (p. 202). Patterned constructions replace the creation and resolution of enigmas. Hypermedia becomes the technology of new creation, while choreography comprises “the institutional practice for augmenting the intuitions of inference, for writing with the logic of the unconscious” (p. 224).Heuretics extends the field of play staked out in Ulmer’s Teletheory. Here is offered a scheme for creating multileveled texts that are both creative and critical and infinitely generative, and that invite readers to connect electronic media to the unconscious. Most readers will not fail to appreciate the wit of the exposition and the clarity of the creative method. Others will pause over some of its assumptions. Certain critical paradigms, such as the antithetical ontologies of Lacan and Derrida, appear easily reconciled. The unnameable traumas of history (genocide) and psychogenesis (the birth and growth of subjectivity) are glossed with an effortless art of citation (pp. 114, 233). The unconscious is assimilated into an easily “accessed” logic, the latter effortlessly “logging in” to the former. The redesign of the Columbian quincentenary indirectly ratifies some of the modes of control that flexible capitalism seeks to impose upon the unconscious. These four points require greater space of exchange in the rich and problematic dialogue that informs Ulmer’s stunning performance of theory.Tom ConleyUniversity of MinnesotaCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

It has been reported that behavior of experts and novices in various sporting tasks is impervious to the introduction of blur. However, studies have used diverse methods of blurring the visual stimulus, and tasks that did not always preserve the normal perception-action coupling. In the current study, we developed a novel experimental protocol to examine the effect of different levels of Gaussian blur on interception performance and eye gaze data using an immersive VR task. Importantly, this provided a realistic simulation (...) of a real-world boxing scenario in which expert combat athletes experienced a first-person, adaptive viewpoint of the visual environment, which could be blurred according to their gaze location. We found that participants exhibited similar interception performance in the presence of central blur or peripheral blur compared to a control condition with no blur. However, interception performance was significantly better with a central blur compared to peripheral blur. Eye gaze data indicated that although participants fixated at similar areas of interest irrespective of the presence of blur, fixation duration was significantly longer with a strong level of blur in the peripheral viewing condition than all levels of central blur and the control condition. These findings can be explained by relocating attention to different areas of the environment, which thereby influenced the perception of salient information. Participants also performed better on the first punch of a sequence preceded by a foot feint compared to arm feint or no feint. Still, irrespective of feint type, performance was significantly better on the second and third punch compared to the first punch. These findings are consistent with participants using additional information from the opponent's body movements and situational probabilities to increase performance as the sequence of punches developed. Overall, these are the first evidence for the use of VR as a means to examine gaze-contingent manipulations of the environment, and hence highlight the potential for facilitating learning and transfer to a real sporting situations. (shrink)

We propose to expand the conversation around moral enhancement from direct brain-altering methods to include technological means of modifying the environments and media through which agents can achieve moral improvement. Virtual Reality (VR) based enhancement would not bypass a person’s agency, much less their capacity for reasoned reflection. It would allow agents to critically engage with moral insights occasioned by a technologically mediated intervention. Users would gain access to a vivid ‘experience machine’ that allows for embodied presence and (...) immersion in a virtual world that meaningfully replicates relevant aspects of real life. We explore how VR can train empathy and foster moral growth in complex ways that would be inaccessible even for traditional moral education. Virtual Reality Perspective Taking is a unique medium for making empathy more reflective. (shrink)

We investigate the nature of the sense of presence that usually accompanies perceptual experience. We show that the notion of a sense of presence can be interpreted in two ways, corresponding to the sense that we are acquainted with an object, and the sense that the object is real. In this essay, we focus on the sense of reality. Drawing on several case studies such as derealization disorder, Parkinson’s disease and virtual reality, we argue that the (...) sense of reality is two-way independent from the spatial and sensory contents of experience. We suggest that the sense of reality is an affective experience akin to a metacognitive feeling. Finally, we present a potentially important implication of our account for the current debate between Intentionalism and Naïve Realism. Since perception is “opaque” with respect to the reality of what is perceived, Intentionalism cannot refer to the sense of reality as what differentiates perception from sensory-like experiences such as imaginings. In contrast, Naïve Realism has an independent explanation of the specificity of perception. (shrink)

In the immersion process the border between the canvas and the spectator or between screen and user dissolves, and the distance or physical separation between virtual and physical space is no longer given. The self can expand into the virtual, to test its own boundaries by abandoning the materiality of the limited corpus (Ostermann and Wenzel 2011). This phenomenon can also be understood as a dialogue, an important exchange, which can be itself an illuminating experience for the self (...) and the mind. If the subject is an individual in an auditorium and the object is changing between the physical space of a digital theatre surrounded by a 360° canvas and the virtual world on the canvas, how can the encounter or the immersion process be described and even more important: how can it be induced? (shrink)

The Virtual Embodied is intended to inform and provoke. It juxtaposes cutting-edge theories, polemics, and creative practices to uncover ethical, aesthetic and ecological implications of why, how and in particular where, human actions, observations and insights take place. It refuses simply to hold a euphoric view of technology yet equally resists the apocalyptic scorn which surrounds the new. The contributors use a range of interdisciplinary strategies to point to a re-worked aesthetic for embodying knowledge and explore such areas as (...) colonialism and the internet, the virtual unconscious in electronic systems, theatre as a virtual space, 'information' and the capitalist society, ecstatic bodies and the rave scene, desire and the 'virtual comfort' zone. In The Virtual Embodied many of the authors, artists, performers and designers apply their interdisciplinary passions to questions of embodied knowledge and virtual space. (shrink)

Trust is essential to human society and the good life. At the same time, citizens of developed countries spend more and more time in virtual environments. This collection asks how far virtual environments, especially those affiliated with -Web 2.0-, challenge and foster trust? <BR> The book's early chapters establish historical, linguistic, and philosophical foundations for key concepts of trust, embodiment, virtuality, and virtual worlds. Four philosophers then analyze how trust - historically interwoven with embodied co-presence - (...) may be enhanced through online environments. Final contributions tackle the specific challenges of virtual child pornography and democratic deliberation online. <BR> This is the first collection devoted exclusively to the philosophical dimensions of trust and virtual worlds. It helps bring the reader up to date on the relevant concepts and issues, and on ways in which widely ranging insights and approaches may nonetheless cohere into a reasonably comprehensive account of trust.". (shrink)

The paper discusses the thesis of virtual realism presented by David Chalmers in his paper “The Virtual and the Real” (2017). Here, I suggest an even stronger version of the claim that I call “virtual physicalism”. According to this view, virtual objects are not only real but physical as they are identical to the physical states of computers that run VR software. I suggest that virtual objects should have a similar ontological status to (...) toys—they should be treated as models or simplifications of ordinary objects. Just like toys, virtual objects can sometimes be good enough to be used instead of their ordinary counterparts. In these cases, virtual objects start to be treated as instantiations of the same kind. In the last part of the paper, I use Johan Huizinga’s notion of a “magic circle” to suggest how different objects could be successfully “virtualized”, that is, moved into a digital realm while remaining objects of the same kind as their non-virtual counterparts. I suggest this will happen once virtual reality becomes permanent and causally connected with non-virtual reality. I finish the paper by looking at examples of natural kind objects and individuals, which seem to be the hardest cases for successful virtualization. (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.

In this paper I develop the thesis that dreams are essential to an understanding of waking consciousness. In the first part I argue in opposition to the philosophers Malcolm and Dennett that empirical evidence now shows dreams to be real conscious experiences. In the second part, three questions concerning consciousness research are addressed. (1) How do we isolate the system to be explained (consciousness) from other systems? (2) How do we describe the system thus isolated? (3) How do we (...) reveal the mechanisms on which this system is based? I suggest that empirical dream research combined with other empirical approaches can help us to sketch answers to all of these questions. I argue that the subjective form of dreams reveals the subjective, macro-level form of consciousness in general and that both dreams and the everyday phenomenal world may be thought of as constructed “virtual realities”. A major task for empirical consciousness research is to find out the mechanisms which bind this experienced world into a coherent whole. (shrink)

Screen-based virtual worlds have been described as fundamentally disembodying. Contrary to this, the aim of this article is to provide a phenomenological analysis of bodily presence in one case of screen-based virtuality. By integrating phenomenology with qualitative research methodologies, I explore esports practitioners’ experiences of bodily presence in League of Legends (LoL). Here, descriptions from real-life esports practitioners are analyzed within the phenomenological framework of ‘incorporation’. My analysis shows that the practitioners’ experience and engage with their (...) virtual world not just by incorporating their physical gaming equipment, but also through incorporation of virtual abilities and tools specific to the game world. Having shown that the LoL practitioner’s body spans both physical and virtual space without leaving the body behind, I situate these results within the discussion of virtual presence in video games. I claim that the practitioners’ sense of presence can be accounted for by situating the integrated physical and virtual tools and abilities within the phenomenological framework of the ‘nullpoint’, understood as a bodily field of activity shaped by our incorporated skills and tools. (shrink)

The actual/virtual distinction is used to give an alternative account of quantum interference by way of a new theory of probability. The new theory is obtained by changing one of the axioms of the canonical theory of probability while keeping the other axioms fixed. It is used to give an alternative account of constructive quantum interference in the two-slit experiment. The account crucially involves a distinction between actual and virtual probabilities. Although actual probabilities are operational and virtual (...) probabilities are not, there is a substantial connection between them. Virtual probabilities may be obtained indirectly from actual probabilities. In showing this, interpretive considerations are brought to bear including some having to do with quantum non-locality. Directions for future research are discussed in closing.La distinción actual/virtual se utiliza para dar una explicación alternativa de la interferencia cuántica a través de una nueva teoría de la probabilidad. La nueva teoría se ha obtenido cambiando uno de los axiomas de la teoría canónica de la probabilidad y manteniendo los otros axiomas fijos. Se usa para dar una explicación alternativa de la interferencia cuántica constructiva en el experimento de la doble rendija. El informe fundamentalmente implica una distinción entre las probabilidades actuales y virtuales. Aunque las probabilidades actuales son operativas y las probabilidades virtuales no, hay una relación sustancial entre ellas. Probabilidades virtuales pueden obtenerse indirectamente a partir de las probabilidades reales. Para demostrar esta interpretación hay que tener en cuenta las consideraciones de interpretación que se ejercen entre ellos y que tienen relación con la no-localidad cuántica. Directrices para futuras investigaciones se abordan al final del artículo. (shrink)

The paper analysis the strategies and concepts developed in the world in modern directions: innova- tive economy, digital economy, artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0 and others. The problem is to determine the initial fundamental parameters of order and their prospects in the global world, the definition and principles of artificial intel- ligence systems, its structure and important aspects and principles of future science and technology in analysis and synthesis based on synergetic approaches, innovative, information, converged technologies, taking into account the design (...) of future and viable and safe and sustainable development in the context of Industry 4.0, digital economy and Society 5.0. The general scheme of the integrated model of sustainable and socio-humanitarian development in the global system is proposed, which the authors call the noosphere model of sustainable and safe development as an important fundamental platform for the design and creation of AIS. In the XXI century education, science and innova- tive technologies becomes the «basis» of the spiritual and material reproduction of man, transforming the society of the XXI century into an educational society, ensures compliance with the law of advanced development of human quality, quality of social intelligence and quality of educational systems in society. noosphere evolution. Industry 4.0 is the next stage in the digitalization of production technologies with the accelerated introduction of new developments and cyberphysical systems, which is changing business models. Accordingly, Industry 4.0 as a separate segment of digital manufacturing technologies takes its place among other digital sectors. The analysis of the Strategies and Concepts developed in the world in modern directions: innovative economy, digital economy, artificial intelli- gence, Industry 4.0 and others is carried out in the work. The problem is to determine the initial fundamental para- meters of order and their prospects in the global world, the definition and principles of artificial intelligence systems, its structure and important aspects and principles of future science and technology in analysis and synthesis ba- sed on synergetic approaches, innovative, information, converged technologies, taking into account the design of future and viable and safe and sustainable development in the context of Industry 4.0, DE and Society 5.0. The main scientific and technological factors in the 21st century will be the development of: Artificial Intelligence, Nano Technologies, Bio-Media Technologies, Cognitive Technologies and Socio-Humanitarian Technologies. More specifically – this is the modern development of Innovative Technologies: «NBIC SH». Therefore, it is necessary to note the importance of taking into account the principle of I2K2+SH, ie: Intellectualization, Integration, Convergence, Coevolution and Socio- humanitarian technologies. It is important and necessary to take into account modern principles of designing a su- stainable and secure AIS and solving the problem of Harmonization between 2 worlds: Real and Virtual, especially in their hybridization. Our immediate future is a hybrid nonlinear world. Note that digitalization, artificial intelligence and robotics will be the main drivers of global economic growth by 2030E. An important paradigm and platform is the Integrated System: for Industry 4.0, DE and AI, taking into account the complex principle of I2K2+SH. If the transition of the Ukrainian economy to an innovative one does not take place in the next 3-5 years, Ukraine will remain in the backyard of civilization. (shrink)