The Phenomenology of Virtual Technology: Perception and Imagination in a Digital Age

The digital age we now live in is fundamentally changing how we relate to our perceptions and images. Daniel O'Shiel provides the first comprehensive phenomenology of virtual technology in order to show how the previously well-established experiential lines and structures between three basic categories of phenomenal experience – our everyday perceptions of reality; our everyday fantasies of irreality; and our everyday engagements with external images, not least digital ones – are becoming blurred, inverted or are even collapsing in a new era where a specific type of virtuality is coming to the fore. O'Shiel examines in depth just what this means for the phenomenology behind it, as well as the concrete practical consequences going forward. The work is divided into two main parts. In the first O'Shiel fully investigates the phenomenological natures of perception and imagination through close textual analyses of the relevant works by Edmund Husserl, Eugen Fink and Jean-Paul Sartre. In each phenomenologist perception and imagination are ultimately seen as different in kind, although the dividing line differs, especially with reference to a middle category of 'image-consciousness' (Bildbewusstsein). This first part argues for basic phenomenological differences between perceptions; physical and external images; and more mental imagery, while also allowing for a more general gradation between them. The second part then applies these theoretical findings to some of the most influential 'virtual technologies' today – social media; online gaming; and some virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies – in order to show how previously clear categories of real and irreal, present and absent, genuine and fake, and even true and false, are becoming less so.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I. PERCEPTION, IMAGE AND THE CHALLENGE OF VIRTUALITY 1. Husserl 1.1. Husserl's Perception 1.2. Presentation, Presentification and Phantasy 1.3. The Problem of Image-Consciousness 2. Fink 2.1. Fink's 'Presentification and Image' 2.2. Presentation, Depresentation and the Types of Presentification 2.3. Image-Consciousness, Again 3. Sartre 3.1. Perception and the Imaginary 3.1.1. Experiencing and Evoking Absence: Perception, Imagination and the Analogon 3.1.2. Sartre's Imaginary: Between Perception and Concept 3.1.3. An Ambiguity in Sartre's Conclusion? 3.2. Sartre's Answer for Image-Consciousness .. 3.3. Recapitulation and Discussion 4. The Challenge of Virtuality 4.1. Heidegger and Our Forked Being 4.2. Bergson and Deleuze 4.3. Perception and Image: a Difference in Kind or Degree? 4.4. Real Virtualities: Self, World, Others and Values PART II. IRREAL VIRTUALITY: THE CASE OF VIRTUAL TECHNOLOGY 5. Social Media 5.1. The Significance and Influence of Social Media 5.2. Changed Selves, Worlds, Others and Values in Social Media 5.3. Breeur's Challenge: A Possibility for Real Engagement On or Through Social Media? 6. Online Gaming 6.1. Games Are Not (Straightforward) Perceptions 6.2. The Online Gaming Experience 6.3. Changed Selves, Worlds, Others and Values in Games 6.4. Reality, Irreality, Superreality and Addiction 7. VR, AR and MR Technologies 7.1. A Summary of VR, AR and MR Technologies 7.2. Changed Selves, Worlds, Others and Values in VR, AR and MR Technologies 7.3. 'Pure' MR and the Case of Holograms 8. Considerations and Consequences 8.1. Virtual Technology: Its Current Status and Scope 8.2. Blurrings, Inversions and Collapses? Current Trends and Future Possibilities Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Daniel O'Shiel is a postdoctoral researcher at the Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile. He is the author of Sartre and Magic: Being, Emotion and Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Review :
How to interpret the relation between the infinite of our actual and real world, and the infinite of the digital and virtual world of social media? Not in terms of “transition”, but in terms of transformation. Daniel O'Shiel describes meticulously the very nature of it: i.e. as form of “irrealization”. This loss of the “real”, he shows, is at the core of the passions and experiences generated by virtual reality. Is this a problem? Read the book, and judge for yourself. We live in a world dominated by the power of the image, wherein the boundaries between the real and the virtual are increasingly blurred. What happens to the self, to the other, and to values in such a situation? Mining crucial insights of classical phenomenology and applying his findings to a variety of contemporary virtual technologies, O'Shiel has produced a valuable monograph not only for scholars of phenomenology, but also for anyone who wishes to think seriously about what it means to perceive and to imagine in the digital age-and about how to do so with greater discernment. O'Shiel's book is a major achievement. It offers a masterful survey of the contributions of major phenomenological thinkers to the conceptualisation and analysis of the virtual which could serve equally well as a point of entry for a phenomenologist curious about the virtual, or a researcher of the virtual seeking to grasp phenomenology. Ultimately O'Shiel's project is a syncretic one, and this overview of phenomenological contributions to the understanding of the virtual serves as a springboard to the production of his own framework. The fecundity of which is amply demonstrated by its application to various forms of virtual technology, such as social media, online gaming, and virtual reality. This book is a treasure trove of phenomenological insights into the virtual. It is engagingly written, conversational without being superficial. The author has made a major contribution to contemporary phenomenology, and this book will undoubtedly become the go to text for those teaching and researching the phenomenology of the virtual.