Virtual Reality as a New Form of Material Being | Электронный журнал

Virtual Reality as a New Form of Material Being

UDC 117; 008.2; 004.946

Sergei V. Orlov – Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Faculty of Humanities, department of History and Philosophy, Doctor of Philosophy, professor, Russia.

E-mail: orlov5508@rambler.ru

15, Gastello st., Saint Petersburg, Russia, 196135,

tel: +7(812)708-42-13

Abstract

Background: There are dozens of information definitions, and it is often thought to be a non-material resource. A conception of non-material nature of information and virtual reality brings to the understanding of information society development as some non-material process, i.e. knowledge progress.

Results: The comparison of such traditional categories of philosophy as matter and consciousness, material and ideal, with some fundamental post-industrial society phenomena (e.g. virtual reality, information, software product, etc.) allows to make a conclusion that in these phenomena a new specific form of objective reality appears. The software product, for example, remains a material phenomenon, because no ideal, spiritual process takes place in a computer. At the same time the software product acquires some features which make it similar to ideal mental images to some extent. To summarize these features by means of the terms ‘quasi ideality’ and ‘quasi subjectivity’ are proposed.

Research implications: Information processes in virtual reality need a new interpretation. The new paradigm consists in understanding them as a special form of interconnection between material and ideal phenomena, i.e. a form which never exists in any other sphere of the world.

Conclusions: Virtual reality appears to be a new specific form of matter, which is developed on the so called matrix of ideal, spiritual reality and it possesses more resemblance with ideal reality than any other form of matter. This resemblance is a main cause of a popular, but inaccurate interpretation of information as a non-material phenomenon.

Keywords: information, software product, virtual reality, material and ideal, quasi ideality and quasi subjectivity.

The study of informational society makes it important to carry out a special research of such phenomena as information, virtual reality, software product, etc. How can we interpret their connections with the traditional concepts of philosophy, namely, those of matter, consciousness, ideal, evolution, man? Can these new realities improve our understanding of fundamental philosophical problems? And even more: do these new phenomena and events bring any essential changes into the objective reality itself? Do these changes demand at least a thorough study and estimation?

Nowadays there exists a widespread opinion that information is a non-material, ideal phenomenon. This popular approach, on the one hand, provokes some serious objections and, on the other hand, stimulates us to carry out a special analysis. That is the analysis of correlation between virtual reality and the basic structures of the material world.

At the beginning of XX century V. I. Lenin in Russia analyzed the philosophical problems of a famous crisis in physics in his book “Materialism and Empiriocriticism”. He proved that there was no other fundamental reality in the world except matter and consciousness, which had been already comprehended by the great philosophers of Ancient Greece. This approach has preserved its value up to date. If information is non-material, we ought to admit that it is a spiritual, mental phenomenon. Hence the psychological processes should take place on every flash and disk when we record information on them. But modern psychology never finds out that a computer possesses any elements of psychics. So the resemblance of informational and psychological processes should be explained in some other way.

From our point of view an incorrect attempt of information interpretation as a spiritual phenomenon is logically connected with some complex social processes of modern time. I mean the coming post-industrial, or informational, society (if to use the term of D. Bell, M. Castells and their followers), which gives rise of more qualitatively complicated mechanism of interaction between material and spiritual events. We can observe, in fact, some crisis in interpretation of matter and its interaction with consciousness (a new aspect of a mind-body problem). This modern crisis partly resembles the situation in physics at the beginning of XX century mentioned above. At the same time the modern crisis is closely connected not with some scientific discoveries themselves, but with technical inventions which are based on these discoveries and produced a revolution in informational technologies (computers, nets, software products).

Overcoming the modern crisis can be achieved by making the conceptions of matter and spirit more exact and by comparing them with some new phenomena of scientific cognition (e. g. information, virtual reality, software product), in which the interaction between matter and spirit appears to be most complicated.

There really exist some reasons for bringing together information, virtual reality, on the one side, and subjective reality, on the other. We can examine this problem better if we study the software product as a special form of reality.

The functions of a computer includes a partial replacing of an ideal mental image by a software product in the processes of regulation and control, modeling it at the material, even physical level. The software product becomes quite a new modification of artificial material phenomena. It provides for some new mechanism of interaction of material and ideal realities. The ideal image exists only on the material substratum – a human brain. While transmitting some functions of regulation and control to a computer, which uses the software product, a person creates a new material phenomenon, which appears to be a simplified material copy of a subject and his ideal product, i. e. a mental image. Such analogue of the mental image – the software product – begins to carry out some functions of the ideal mental image, but it differs from this image in the main point: any software product belongs to material reality.

The degree of resemblance between software and the mental image may be defined by comparing their basic characteristics. The main features of the mental image are thought to be its ideality and subjectivity. While modeling these features of ideal mental images by means of material, physical processes software acquires some resemblance with mental images. We propose that we summarize this resemblance by means of new notions: quasiideality and quasisubjectivity.

Quasiideality. The content of the mental image does not consist of characteristics of material substratum of thought (brain), but of the characteristics of an external object which a person recognizes. The software product is also created for the purpose of reflecting the characteristics of external objects and regulating machinery influence over them. But this product remains entirely a material, physical phenomenon. The ideal image is a way of existence of external object characteristics which are separated from their own natural substratum on the basis of a special universal material substratum, i. e. human brain. In computers producing virtual reality some kind of universal material substratum is also used, that is data carrier. Any information which a person possesses may be recorded on this carrier. But the universality of such a carrier is not absolute, in contrast to the universality of a human being and his brain. The universality of a data carrier is provided by the universality of human being cognition and his material labor activity. The programmer endows software with some superficial features of an ideal form of reflection, which any other material object does not possess. The software product expresses the content of some other material substrates and of some forms of human activity, keeps information about them remaining an entirely material formation itself. It is simpler than the ideal images. It is a simplified physical model of ideal human thought that is a quasiideal phenomenon.

Quasisubjectivity. Subjectivity of thought consists of its escape from outside observation, its existence only for the reflecting subject, its impossibility to transmit it to any other subjects. If the ideal phenomena are utterly subjective in their forms (but not in their content), the software product possesses only some outward characteristics of the ideal image. It is inaccessible for human perception if we don’t use some special equipment. Its inner content is usually hidden and not observable for anybody except the programmer, who is able to use special codes. Subjectivity of the ideal image arises from the absolute impossibility of transmission of a brain substance inner content from the brain to any other substance. Quasisubjectivity of the software product results from technical difficulties in decoding its inner structure by outside observer.

Thus the software product appears to be a qualitatively new class of material objects created by man as a part of the so called “second nature” (technosphere, noosphere) at the post-industrial stage of social progress. According to its functions and outer manifestations the software product stands closer to human thinking than any other component of the material technical production system. The other components of the technical system (machinery) are to be coordinated with physical and even mechanical resources of man, while the software product ought to be coordinated with the potentialities of man’s psychics. Software makes longer the way from the ideal image to its materialization in a productive labor process, as like as a mechanical instrument made longer the way from the human hand to the subject of human labor at the dawn of civilization. So the ideal image, i. e. the aim of labor activity, materializes in the labor process not directly but through an intermediate stage – the software product, which controls the functions of machinery and seems to be a “thought-looking”, quasiideal, quasisubjective material image. Only owing to software product functioning a new class of soluble theoretical and practical problems as well as some new spheres of labor activities have appeared. They are space exploration and nuclear energy, new systems of information control and transmission, online business, telecommuting, etc.

We can describe virtual reality as a totality of special material structures and processes which are developed on the so called matrix of ideal, spiritual reality. This new form of objective reality possesses special qualities – quasiideality and quasisubjectivity. Hence it is capable of modeling any spiritual, mental processes in more exact and detailed way than other well-known material processes can. Virtual reality is created by man as an artificial modification, a new sphere of objective reality, as a material mediator, which allows to improve the influence of consciousness over matter. It is possible to suppose that the way of development of objective and subjective reality interaction will consist in forming some mediatory links (structures). These links express the content of one reality with the help of the other more and more correctly. This process is not only the cognition of something which already exists but also the formation of new levels of material and spiritual realities in man’s labor activities.

The creation of virtual reality gives birth to substantial, perhaps revolutionary displacements in social consciousness, which have not been completed yet and therefore cannot be evaluated completely. These displacements are closely connected with a higher level of informing and availability of information which change the psychology of personal contacts and, as a result, new channels of intercommunication between people appear. These channels form a modern type of personality with new characteristics of sense perception and abstract thinking, which demands special investigations by means of psychology, sociology, theory of culture and other humanities.

Ссылка на статью:
Orlov S. V. Virtual Reality as a New Form of Material Being // Философия и гуманитарные науки в информационном обществе. – 2013. – № 2. – С. 88–91. URL: http://fikio.ru/?p=654.