AESTHETICS AND VIRTUAL REALITY

According to David Chalmers (2022, xvii) in his recent book:

Virtual worlds are not illusions or fictions, at least they need

not be. What happens in V R really happens. The objects

we interact with are real.

I want to disagree with Chalmers on two of three fronts. First, virtual reality

is typically illusory. Second, virtual reality is typically fictional. On the third

front, I’m ambivalent: some philosophers argue fictional characters are real,

in which case even if the virtual objects we interact with are fictions, they

are also “real”, or in other words exist.

References

Chalmers, D. J. (2022). Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of

Philosophy, Allen Lane, Great Britain.