New Comm Tech

This week’s lecture was titled “Virtual Philosophy” and was regarding the philosophical concept of reality.  Two main philosophers were discussed: Plato and Rene Descartes, as both spoke in depth about the nature of reality and existence (not to be confused with the yet to be reached branch of philosophy titled existentialism).

To begin, we discussed Plato’s allegory of “The Cave”, which was featured in his most famous work The Republic.  Plato communicated his message by symbolically describing a scenario where a mass of people have been chained inside of a cave for their entire lives.  They face a blank wall and can only see shadows which had been projected onto said wall from a fire behind them.  The people, having seen nothing else, believe these shadows to be real forms and assign form and meaning to them.  However, if the people were to be released from their prison, they would have no concept of what other objects and concepts were: since his/her previous “reality” would have been all that they had known.

We then continued on and reviewed Rene Descartes, who is famously quoted as saying “I think, therefore I am”.  Although this quote was not discussed in the lecture, it seems to be a relevant, concise summary of his philosophy.  A similar sentiment was expressed by Plato, who spoke that “knowledge is knowledge” - meaning that if one is conscious that one is thinking, then they are conscious that they exist.  Descartes theorized the notion of dualism: the mind and body are separate entities with a dynamic relationship that result in human action and consciousness.  The mind is logical and rational, while the body is corrupted by feeling and aesthetic.  Ultimately, the mind controls the body, however the body can be powerful enough to influence the mind.

With the ever-quickly advancing technologies of the modern world becoming available to us, philosophical questions about the nature of virtual reality are becoming far more prevalent.  With iPhones that display information about the places that you’re at (while you’re at them) and MMORPG’s that are as much a part of people’s lives as their friends and family, the lines between reality and VR and becoming increasingly blurred.  However, it can be argued that all of these VR and AR technologies exist within the same reality as ours.  They’re simply code and binary that are as real as you or I.  To put it another way: a rainbow is merely a reflection of light, however it exists as a rainbow due to how it is viewed.