On Unbearable Thinness of the Reality

Shadows of the Metaphor of Cave over Virtual Reality

Abstract

The theme of our discussion ‘Reality and Virtual Reality’ seems, if we take it in antagonistic sense, somewhat awkward at this day. For in many occasions of everyday life such as playing with interactive game soft, testing by simulations for driving skills check, or using MRI images for medical diagnoses, ‘Virtual Reality’ is already partially built in our ‘Reality’. But the dark side of this kind of thing is also becoming conspicuous. An animation TV program named ‘Pokemon’ made children be in panic and paralyzed by rapid movements and too much strong stimulations of their images. But we are eventually caught by a suspicion that Reality does not partially consists of Virtual Reality but amounts to Virtual Reality itself. Such an empty feeling of Reality from which we are distanced has a philosophical background.
I spell this out by scrutinizing three points or, shall I say, pitfalls (1) an active power of human mind which works on the dead nature, (2) mechanization of human body as a part of such nature, (3) internality of human thought which is insulated from environmental world and only by representations can keep contact with it.
And in trying to show a way out from these pitfalls, I also explore some traces of prisoners of the cave in Plato's Republic in Descartes' body-machines as well as in cybernauts put on head-mounted-display.