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The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds

Rob Fraser Orcid Logo

Metaphysics, Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Pages: 85 - 98

Swansea University Author: Rob Fraser Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.5334/met.156

Abstract

What is the ontological status of virtual worlds? The two prominent positions in the recent debate are David Chalmers’s virtual digitalism and Neil McDonnell and Nathan Wildman’s virtual fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with both. To overcome their...

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Published in: Metaphysics
ISSN: 2515-8279
Published: Ubiquity Press 2024
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68392
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title The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
spellingShingle The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
Rob Fraser
title_short The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
title_full The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
title_fullStr The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
title_full_unstemmed The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
title_sort The Social Reality of Virtual Worlds
author_id_str_mv b672bd356b55dba1f5d104300a083215
author_id_fullname_str_mv b672bd356b55dba1f5d104300a083215_***_Rob Fraser
author Rob Fraser
author2 Rob Fraser
format Journal article
container_title Metaphysics
container_volume 7
container_issue 1
container_start_page 85
publishDate 2024
institution Swansea University
issn 2515-8279
doi_str_mv 10.5334/met.156
publisher Ubiquity Press
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Social Sciences - Politics, Philosophy and International Relations{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Social Sciences - Politics, Philosophy and International Relations
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description What is the ontological status of virtual worlds? The two prominent positions in the recent debate are David Chalmers’s virtual digitalism and Neil McDonnell and Nathan Wildman’s virtual fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to be dissatisfied with both. To overcome their limitations, I propose a novel position, virtual socialism. Drawing on the ‘two-dimensional’ approach to social ontology articulated by Brian Epstein, I suggest that virtual objects are social objects grounded in the states of a computer, but ‘anchored’ by a variety of social and non-social factors. Virtual socialism, I suggest, makes the best sense of the messy relationship virtual reality bears to digital reality, as well as the fact that virtual reality can sometimes be inconsistent.
published_date 2024-11-25T14:10:58Z
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