Virtuality

Jean Baudrillard sees in today’s simulation the model ‘of a real but without origin or reality: a hyperreal’. With the hyperreal, the individual is unable to distinguish what is real and what is not. In this article, I argue how the pervasiveness of media, in the form of mobile phones, tablets with their applications and social networking sites, singularly or in unison create and sustain the existence of the hyperreal. They succeed at once through an imagined call for urgency and an implosion of meaning that cannot be contained. This type of media is a priori a form of simulation, and has not only erased the boundaries that exit between the real and the unreal but has also developed as a site accountable for continual deference of the being-in-theworld, forcing on the latter a perpetual existence in the hyperreal.

Based on a brief overview of the history of ontology and on some philosophical problems of virtual reality, a new approach to virtuality is proposed. To characterize the representational (information, cognitive, cultural, communication) technologies in the Internet age, I suggest that Aristotle’s dualistic ontological system (which distinguishes between actual and potential being) be complemented with a third form of being: virtuality. In the virtual form of being actuality and potentiality are inseparably intertwined. Virtuality is potentiality considered together with its actualization. In this view, virtuality is reality with a measure, a reality which has no absolute character, but which has a relative nature. This situation can remind us the emergence of probability in the 17th century: then the concept of certainty, now the concept of reality is reconsidered and relativized. Currently, in the descriptions of the world created by representational technologies, there are two coh...

Dieser Aufsatz diskutiert die Beschaffenheit und Qualität der Lehre in virtuellen Klassenzimmern unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Online-Identitäten. Als Fallbeispiel dient insbesondere eine Lehrveranstaltung, bei der Studierende im Industriepraktikum online supervidiert werden.

Wenn von Virtualität oder dem Virtuellen die Rede ist, wird dies zumeist im technischen Sinne verstanden: »Virtuell« ist dann das, was nicht materiell ist, wie etwa das, was auf Bildern zu sehen ist. In einem gesteigerten Maße wird darüber hinaus von virtuellen Bildern gesprochen, womit mögliche Fixierungen von Erscheinungen in einem Bild gemeint sind. Hierzu gehören neben dem Spiegelbild, das für Jacques Lacan als Mittel der Ichidealisierung der Inbegriff der Selbstverkennung ist, insbesondere die noch nicht aufgezeichnete Informationsdarstellung im Sucher oder auf dem Display der analogen bzw. digitalen Videokamera oder am Überwachungsmo- nitor der Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). Vor allem aber wird und wurde gegen Ende des letzten Jahrhunderts das Virtuelle als das Trügerische, als das Nichtwahre begriffen. Unter den Verdacht einer Täuschung oder Lüge gerieten damit zunächst Simulationstechniken, insbesondere computerbasierte. Ein maßgeblicher Vertreter dieses Medienpessimismus, der gleichsam von einem Realitätsfatalismus getragen wurde, war Jean Baudrillard, der den Verlust jedweder Wirklichkeit durch Virtualisierung prophezeit.

This paper seeks to clarify the role of the image in video game representation. I argue that virtuality is incompatible with depictive representation, and that the distinction between virtual environments and interactive depiction is important in game theory and analysis. In the first part I combine a critical modification of Kendall Walton’s concept of reflexive representation with Edmund Husserl’s concept of image consciousness, in order to clarify the ontological difference between physical models and depictive images. In the second part, I discuss
the relationship between physical models and virtual things, and the difference between photographic depiction and screen-mediated prosthetic vision. Finally, I show how this theoretical framework can help clarify the nature of interactive depiction in games.

Keywords: representation, depiction, simulation, virtuality, Husserl, Walton

This study investigates how the members of four different role-playing communities on the online platform Second Life perform social as well as dramatic roles within their community. The trajectories of power influencing these roles are my main focus. Theoretically I am relying primarily on performance scholar Richard Schechner, sociologist, Erving Goffman, and post-structuralists Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. My methodological stance has its origin primarily within literature studies using text analysis as my preferred method, but I also draw on the (cyber)ethnographical works of T.L. Taylor, Celia Pearce, and Mikael Jakobsson. In this dissertation my focus is on the relationship of the role-player to their chosen role especially in terms of the boundary between being in character, and as such removed from "reality," and the popping out of character, which instead highlights the negotiations of the social, sometimes make-belief, roles. Destabilising ...

An analysis of the physical implications of abstractness reveals the reality of three interconnected modes of existence: abstract, virtual and concrete. This triple-aspect monism clarifies the ontological status of subatomic quantum particles. It also provides a non-spooky solution to the weirdness of quantum physics and a new outlook for the mind-body problem. The ontological implications are profound for both physics and philosophy.

While technology is transforming itself from tool to aim, machines started to use individuals. The machines that are being developed to facilitate human life have become indispensible for individuals' lives because of the advantages they offer. This approach, which is the mile stone of technological determinism, is changing the relation between the technology and the machine, and the relation between humans and machines. In this study, through the questions " Is technology a machine or are humans machines? " human's and technology's future is reviewed with a critical approach and discussed with a recommended model. According to this approach, human develops the machine that facilitates his/her life and then depends on that machine emotionally and continues his/her life with it. This emotional commitment helps the human produce continuously. Behaving so, the human tries to improve the life by enabling the machine to serve more advantageous features. With today's technology, human's approach to virtual reality, and hence to technological determinism has changed and at this point it turned out to be the cause of the virtual determinism's occurrence. Now the human, who has adopted a lifestyle interpenetrated with virtual reality, has demanded technology to improve this way and with the user-base for virtual reality googles spreading he/she has had the chance to live different experiences. In a virtual world, individuals who have experienced the data which have been coded and designed beforehand like it was real, are able to play games, design, communicate, and do shopping, watch news in places where they cannot be in real life. If it is briefly stated they do most of the activities they can and can't do in their real lives. This situation increases human's demand towards virtual reality, canalizes technology's development in this direction, and with this developing technology, human's evolution accelerates. As a result of this, technology's benefits increases thanks to virtual reality glasses. In this context, throughout the study, virtual reality technology is observed. With a group of twelve children aged 9 to12, an experiential study is conducted with virtual reality glasses. A chosen Playstation4 Pro VR themed game was played by the children who participated in the study, and their reactions are recorded then their attitudes towards virtual reality were analyzed by measuring the game's real-time image and the child's reactions to it.

Az utóbbi évtizedekben a társadalmi lét újratermelésében dominánssá váló reprezentációs technikák kiterjedt használata miatt valóságfelfogásunk átalakul. A valóság átértelmezésében meghatározó szerepet játszik a virtualitás fogalma: virtualitás az, ami nem a valóság, de olyan "mintha" az lenne. A virtualitás terminusa új keletű, de tartalma nem: egy történeti áttekintésben felidézzük, hogy a filozófiai gondolkodásban a valóság természetének és jellemzőinek vizsgálata során a virtualitás premodern, modern és posztmodern változatainak számos karakterisztikumára fény derült. A virtualitás és a virtuális valóság konstrukcióját részletesebben jellemezve igénybe vesszük a jelenlét, a világszerűség és a pluralitás nélkülözhetetlen fogalmait. Arra a következtetésre jutunk, hogy az arisztotelészi duális ontológiai rendszert ki kell bővíteni, s a valóság és lehetőség szerinti lét mellett be kell vezetni a virtualitást is, mint a lét ama harmadik szféráját, amelyben aktualitás és potencialitás elválaszthatatlansága nyilvánul meg. Virtualitás a nem abszolút mértékkel rendelkező valóság, a valóság, amelynek nem eleve adott abszolút jellege van, hanem viszonylagos és változó mértéke. A reprezentációs technikákkal előállított létezők eredendően virtuálisak.

Az identitás értelmezéseinél általában előnyben részesítjük az érzékszerveink által közvetlenül elérhető makroszkopikus objektumokra vonatkozó tapasztalatainkat és az ily módon azonosítható relációkat, tulajdonságokat. Évtizedes viták zajlanak például a - közvetlen érzéki hozzáférést nélkülöző - mikrofizika által tanulmányozott létezők identitásának problémájáról, megoldások helyett számos paradox következménnyel. Efféle dilemmák az emberi világtól se idegenek - világosan megmutatkoznak például a humán genetika körül zajló diszkussziókban. Egy ezekhez némileg hasonló kérdéskört tanulmányozunk: a digitális technikák által létrehozott és kezelt létezőknek a jellemzésével próbálkozunk, különös tekintettel az identitás lehetséges értelmezéseire. A tulajdonképpeni cél pedig a digitális kommunikációs és kulturális technikák emberi identitásra gyakorolt hatásainak a bemutatása, a személyes identitás sajátos változatának az ún. e-személyiség fogalmának bevezetése és rövid jellemzése lesz

Screen-based virtual worlds have been described as fundamentally disembodying. Contrary to this, the aim of this article is to provide a phenomenological analysis of bodily presence in one case of screen-based virtuality. By integrating phenomenology with qualitative research methodologies, I explore esports practitioners’ experiences of bodily presence in League of Legends (LoL). Here, descriptions from real-life esports practitioners are analyzed within the phenomenological framework of ‘incorporation’. My analysis shows that the practitioners’ experience and engage with their virtual world not just by incorporating their physical gaming equipment, but also through incorporation of virtual abilities and tools specific to the game world. Having shown that the LoL practitioner’s body spans both physical and virtual space without leaving the body behind, I situate these results within the discussion of virtual presence in video games. I claim that the practitioners’ sense of presence can be accounted for by situating the integrated physical and virtual tools and abilities within the phenomenological framework of the ‘nullpoint’, understood as a bodily field of activity shaped by our incorporated skills and tools.

The use of computer-generated imagery is becoming increasingly ubiquitous across many fields including media, advertising, architecture and art. This represents a fundamental shift within visual culture, as imagery can now be produced routinely by means of rendering algorithms based on spatial representations. We propose that the account of the image provided by Gilles Deleuze in his books on cinema provides a rich philosophical framework for understanding such contemporary imaging practices. By providing a Deleuzian reading of James Kajiya's 1986 rendering equation we argue that there is a tacit ontology of the image underwriting both Deleuze's work on cinema and current computer graphics technologies. This ontology frees the image from traditional transcendent categories of subject positions or vantage points and instead revolves around the concept of an immanent image. We argue that these considerations lead us to a reformulation of the notion of the virtual, one that challenges its rigid segregation from the real.

In the Medium of Communication: Studies on the Philosophy of Communication. This volume collects my papers written in recent years on contemporary communication phenomena and communication processes in the wider sense, focusing on the analysis of specific issues related to communication (science communication, interdisciplinarity, application, new media, virtuality, simulacrum, comprehension). The inclusion of these thematically divergent essays is motivated by their common conceptual framework. The hermeneutical approach to communication issues allows for the critical confrontation between the two fundamental communicative attitudes, efficient communication vs. understanding communication.
x x x
Ez a tanulmánykötet az utóbbi években keletkezett tanulmányaimat gyűjti össze, amelyek tágabb értelemben vett kortárs kommunikációs jelenségeket és folyamatokat fognak át, egy-egy sajátosan kommunikációs kérdéskör (tudománykommunikáció, interdiszciplinaritás, applikáció, új média, virtualitás, szimulakrum, szót értés) vizsgálatára összpontosítva. A tematikailag szerteágazó írások kötetbe gyűjtését egységes szemléleti keretük indokolja. A kommunikációs kérdéseknek a filozófiai hermeneutika irányából történő megközelítése alapján lehetővé válik a két alapvető kommunikatív beállítódás ‒ a hatékony kommunikáció és a megértő kommunikáció ‒ kritikai szembesítése egymással.

Das Verhältnis von Realität, Virtualität und Simulation ist gerade mit Blick auf das Phänomen der Digitalisierung zentral. Häufig wird der Term "virtuelle Realität" synonym zu "(digitaler) Simulation" gebraucht. Doch ist diese Gleichsetzung philosophisch aus mehreren Gründen problematisch. Denn sie suggeriert, dass Virtualität der Realität einander entgegengesetzt seien. Dagegen möchte ich dafür argumentieren, Virtualität und Realität nicht gegeneinander auszuspielen, sondern Virtualität als einen Modus von Realität zu verstehen.

In On the Plurality of Worlds David Lewis claims that the actual world is one of a huge plurality of concrete worlds, inhabited by equally concrete individuals, and that these worlds are causally and spatiotemporally isolated. Our world is the actual world, the other worlds are, from our perspective, possible worlds, and the belief that things might be otherwise than they are comes from an existential quantification over these concrete possible worlds. In Différence et repetition Gilles Deleuze claims that «the virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual». If we replace the word ‘virtual’ with ‘possible’, Deleuze’s claim seems to perfectly match that of Lewis: the ‘virtual/possible’ is real without being actual and it possesses a fundamental explanatory power. Furthermore, both philosophers claim that a plurality of worlds exists and that we must distinguish ‘accessibility’ from genuine ‘possibility’. However, right in the gap between virtual and possible – gap that tends too often to vanish – we can trace the difference between Lewis’s philosophy and that of Deleuze, between a metaphysics of possibility and a metaphysics of potentiality. In order to put in constructive conversation two philosophers that belong to traditions far removed from each other, we need to distinguish the reality of possible from the reality of virtual; this requires to sketch an outline of Deleuze’s theory of possibility and possible worlds, theory in which the doctrine of the possible is wholly governed by the doctrine of the virtual. While underlining similarities and differences, we suggest an alternative way to make sense of Lewis’s claim about the existence of a concrete plurality of worlds without relying on the problematic «principle of recombination», and we point out how a philosophy of virtuality could offer a useful contribution to the ongoing debate on dispositions. Besides similarities, the major interest for comparing the reality of the possible and the reality of virtual stems from the key role played by Lewis’s and Deleuze’s ideas in the Italian and international philosophical debate.

"Nichts ist, wie es scheint", "nichts geschieht zufällig", und "alles ist miteinander verbunden" - diese drei Grundannahmen charakterisieren Verschwörungstheorien unterschiedlicher Provenienz. Damit zeigen sie eine deutliche Parallelität zur Struktur von paranoidem Bedeutungserleben und Wahn. Dem stehen jedoch wichtige Unterschiede gegenüber, etwa die Bildung ausgedehnter Gruppen von Verschwörungsgläubigen, denen keine paranoiden "Wahngemeinschaften" entsprechen. Der Aufsatz untersucht zunächst beide Phänomene vergleichend und wendet sich dann der Frage zu, wie die Virtualisierung der Kommunikation in den sozialen Medien die Bildung von verschwörungstheoretischen Gemeinschaften begünstigt.

A translation of Michel Serres' 1994 work Atlas. From the Translator's Afterword: Some time back around 1998 or 1999, Anthony Uhlmann embarked on a translation of Atlas. He even had a publisher all lined up and a contract. Yet after he submitted the translation, he never heard back from the publisher (University of Michigan Press). Multiple attempts to contact them were made, all to no avail. He still doesn’t understand why.
Enter myself around early 2020. I had heard about the translation and was given Anthony’s name and email address. So I contacted him to inquire as to why his translation hadn’t been published. He told me the sad story. I suggested just tossing it on to the internet for free. That would be the Serresian solution. I volunteered to go over it and make suggestions. Instead, Anthony invited me to take over the project. I warned him that I would change the translation to fit my style. He agreed. So I have retranslated Atlas based on Anthony’s original. Needless to say, any mistakes are purely my own.
Since the original publishers still own the translation rights and are still not answering emails, even from other interested publishers, I have decided to give it away for free.

We are in the midst of a return to Henri Bergson – the French philosopher whose influence touches the fields of continental philosophy, literary theory and art theory. This revival of interest in his work could even be called a full-blown Bergson renaissance. Tano S. Posteraro contributes to this increasingly serious study of Bergson’s philosophy with a tight focus on Bergson’s theory of evolution. He presents an alternative Bergson: not a phenomenologist whose central concern is the conscious experience of lived time or the lived body in time, but a systematic philosopher of biology with a robust, prescient and largely workable evolutionary programme.

Here are discusses a number of specific semantic and morphological issues of the music created with an instrumentality of electronic audio technologies in a certain narrow context, which is formulated as an aspect of the phonographic archetypes simulation. Since the mid XX century electronic audio technology gradually began to conquer not only an academic domain, but also the sphere of popular music, media production for theater and film industry, making a strong foundation of the expression means resources in so called applied music. Genesis of virtuality in the present context, has been unhesitatingly postulate as a symbolical levels of abstractness within the musical culture formulas being as an immanent virtual sphere. Accordingly, the elements of the musical text, being the oldest form of substitution of the "real" psychic phenomena experiences serve as the main virtualization pool in musical culture. Nowadays, this context even more expanding due to the virtualization of specific presentation forms of immanent musical ideas, such as specific timbre, the perceptible properties of the acoustic space by replacing them with a technology of virtual symbolic abstractions.

This article strives to make novel headway in the debate concerning esports' relationship to sports by focusing on the relationship between esports and physicality. More precisely, the aim of this article is to critically assess the claim that esports fails to be sports because it is never properly "direct" or "immediate" compared to physical sports. To do so, I focus on the account of physicality presented by Jason Holt, who provides a theoretical framework meant to justify the claim that esports is never properly immediate and therefore never sports. I begin by motivating Holt's account of physicality by contrasting it with a more classical way of discussing physicality and sports, namely in terms of physical motor skills. Afterwards, I introduce Holt's account of physicality as immediacy and engage with its assumptions more thoroughly to problematize the claim that esports is fundamentally indirect. Lastly, I argue that the assumption that esports necessarily lacks immediacy is based on a narrow understanding of body and, consequently, of space. In response, I offer a different way of thinking about body and space, focusing on the subjective, bodily engagement of the esports practitioners with their practice, whereby physical space and virtual space can be appreciated as immediately interconnected during performance in a hybrid manner. In providing such an account, the article contributes directly to the broader, growing discussion on the relationship between physicality and virtuality in an increasingly digital world.

"Cybercultural Ecologies examines the interpenetrating relationships between nature, virtuality, and narrative. Operating at the interface between ecocriticism and cyberculture, its approach is narrative-based and thematic, focusing on texts (literary, cinematic, and new media) which depict varying conceptions of technology, virtuality, and their effects. Understanding these effects is ecologically crucial, because technovirtual interfaces profoundly alter one’s experience of nature, corporeality, and relationships. Even the most basic sense of what counts as an environment in the first place depends on the interfaces one uses.

The Introduction examines the ambiguities surrounding the terms of its own investigation: cyberculture, ecology, interface, nature, virtuality. Drawing from Jacques Derrida and Marshall McLuhan, it responds to the “interface anxiety” evinced by environmental writers and ecocritics by arguing that nostalgia for an “authentic,” supplement-free mode of “contact” is itself a pastoral fiction.

Chapter I examines virtuality’s relationship with nature in both virtual reality and mixed reality paradigms, beginning with nineteenth-century decadence and aestheticism — Huysmans’ A Rebours (1884) and Morris’ News from Nowhere (1890)—before moving to Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), Gibson’s Spook Country (2007), and Vinge’s Synthetic Serendipity (2004).

Chapter II questions the attempt to evade virtuality and machinery in order to reclaim “unmediated contact” through the “natural” body in Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909) and Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928).

Chapter III looks at the liberation offered by the virtual body, as well as its liabilities, in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759), Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), and Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000).

Chapter IV scrutinizes the authenticity of virtual relationships in Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel (1940) and Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005).

Chapter V inquires into how a virtual sense of place is evoked in Dickens’ mid-nineteenth century railway sketches and in 21st-century digital interactive narratives.

The Conclusion examines the film Avatar (2009) and explores the possibilities (and problems) that arise in attempting to make audiences “see” with ecological vision through the lenses of virtuality."

From the period that David Herman refers to as classical narratology to the present day, we can observe major shifts in the way plot and narrative sequence are dealt with, giving new insights into the dynamics and indeterminacy of narrative structures. This shift has transformed what used to be considered a symmetrical construction (focusing on the unity of the story shaped by the teller) into a kind of labyrinth in which virtual events become as important as events that have been actually told. Thus, despite a proliferation of epistemologies (reception theory, functionalism, rhetoric, cognitive science, etc.), postclassical narratologies converge by stating that in order to understand the forms and functions of plots, we must take into account the “dialectical interplay between narrative and consciousness” (Herman 2007). On this basis, it is no longer possible to avoid “the analysis of how readers’ decisions contribute to the construction of the narrative world” (Kafalenos 2001). Commenting on a short story of Borges, “The Garden of Forking Path,” I shall distinguish between different ways of dealing with the virtualities of the story. The potential tensions between these perspectives can be seen as challenges that contemporary narratology must face when going beyond the mere description of the internal logic of the fabula.

Grounded in the philosophies of experience of Martin Heidegger, George Herbert Mead, and Alfred Schutz, this paper presents and emerging concept called the interactional self to illustrate how there are no clear phenomenological distinctions between the so-called “virtual world” and the dichotomously positioned “real world.” Instead, after presenting the two most predominant narrative trajectories that looked at Internet-mediated communication from this real/virtual split, the paper then explores how social interactional and phenomenological approaches can help the Internet researcher come to understand that a more nuanced reality is present in online social settings. Ultimately, the paper shows how the philosophies of experience of Heidegger, Mead, and Schutz can help the Internet researcher better conceptualize the tight intermingling of the online with the offline in Internet-mediated social settings. Such philosophies allow the communication researcher to delve more deeply into users’ phenomenologically-rooted use-contexts, performative practices, and intersubjective life-world experiences in Internet-mediated sociability.

Sex toys have been a controversial topic and discussion across the globe. It has also been a context in sexual, personality and identity development for teenagers, adults in accepting and regaining their identity. In fact in countries like the US, UK, Nigeria, South Africa where sexual development and education is oriented during the ages from 7 to 18 years, sex toys are usually wide spread in these orientations. Most guidance, parents and counselors have seen the alternating side in giving counsels and purchase of these toys to teenagers and adult, saying it is a better option to STIs, HIV and AIDS, Ebola, Teenage Pregnancy, maladaptive adjustment and other sexual deviance. But quite a large number of people refute this, as it supports other large areas of sexual and social deviances.  This article considers various aspects of sex toys; history, orientation, acceptance, benefits and risk involve in the industry of sex toys and how Nigerians perceive the general perception and preconception of sex toys and its industry.

This thesis presents an emerging concept called the interactional self to illustrate how, contrary to theories of “cyberspace” and “cyberselves,” there tend not to be sharp socio-phenomenological distinctions between “virtual” and offline sociability within one’s life-world. As such, using aspects of the philosophies of experience of Heidegger, Mead, Schutz, and Husserl as foundations, this thesis argues that social interactions online, for most, are extensions of and not apart from their everyday, situated life-worlds.
After briefly introducing the path towards our contemporary “will-to-virtuality” and various utopian and dystopian visions of “cyberspace,” an alternative conceptual picture of the interactional self is gradually revealed using the metaphor of a portrait painted on a “social-world canvas.” In this painting, the ontology of Heidegger’s Dasein supplies the first brushes for outlining the early sketches of the interactional self, showing that online, as in offline settings, we encounter the world and others from the position of beings deeply engaged in practical daily acts and “interpretative understandings.” These brushes are then dipped into Mead’s intertactionist colours and Schutz’s socio-phenomenological textures, eventually filling in the portrait. Illustrated via a case study of blogging practices, Mead’s theory of the “generalized other” highlights the notion that the interactional self does not concretely distinguish between offline and online social settings but instead, as in more traditional “off the network” situations, uses Internet-mediated communication for performative practices that afford self-expression and maintain social cohesion. Schutz’s phenomenology of the life-world gives further perspective to the interactional self, showing that online sociability should not be viewed as being apart from the “intersubjective” intersection of life-worlds rooted in everyday life. With some help from Husserl’s phenomenology, Schutz is subsequently relied on for understanding online textual embodiment, spatial extensions, community, role-playing, and fantasy, adding yet more socio-historical shadings to interactions online.
Ultimately, the picture that emerges is framed within the following four concluding hypotheses: 1) The interactional self encounters social acts, online and off, as part of its greater life-world, practicing performative and group-enforcing self-management through 2) varying and interlinked dimensions of sociability and 3) pragmatic yet meaningful uses of the communicational tools at hand in 4) contextually relevant degrees of self-disclosure.

Music related to Buddhism, or Buddhist music in general, gains attention only in the recent decades. Mahāyāna Buddhism substantially registers the importance of music, despite a restriction on the monastic involvement in music performance. While Vajrayāna Buddhism and ‘engaged Buddhism’ have emerged as a global trend that increasingly applies a musical context in many religious movements, Buddhist music is rather deemed problematic to Theravādins. To gaze this music with a philosophical perspective, phenomenality is employed as one of the typical Buddhist emphasises that promotes a detachment from the delusion of worldly existence. In this context, music is merely reflected as a perceived phenomenon. The virtual perspective is another access point to the concept of phenomenality since the internet has created a new dimension that transcends the boundaries across time and space. Subsequently, music enthusiasts, knowledge seekers, and Buddhist practitioners in 21st-century Malaysia, who no longer need to overcome the problems of distance and unscheduled absence at a specific location, are allowed to access relevant data conveniently according to various needs.
Malaysians embrace an innovatory ‘tech’ life that drastically transforms urban lifestyle with a newly developed ‘mobile-only’ culture in the 21st century, a time widely regarded as the digital era. However, the adaptation of a ‘tech’ lifestyle brings about a question of existence in virtuality, which is also connected to the online experience of Buddhist music. Spreading fast through a virtual platform, Buddhist music somehow appears in diverse styles but it also perpetuates a possibility for its musical attributes to remain questionable.
This qualitative research explores possible connections of music related to Buddhism with parallel ideas of phenomenality and virtuality, and investigates the emphasis of the contexts of ‘Buddhism’ and ‘music’ as well as aspects that makes music ‘Buddhist’ by considering music seen from multiple perspectives. Employing a contemporary view of virtual ethnography by Hine, this musicology on Buddhist music in 21st-century Malaysia undertakes a combination of qualitative analytical methods in which discourse analysis, hermeneutic phenomenology, metaphorical analysis, ethnostatistics and music analysis significantly operate on data sources as a way of knowing.
This study consciously regards all music related to Buddhism as an all-inclusive genre called ‘Buddhism-related music’, while the term ‘Buddhist music’, which is  adopted to classify or describe this typical music, is employed interchangeably though both terms are not entirely the same in contexts. As the outcomes, it is found out that Buddhism-related music hardly constitutes significant typological criteria based on its sonic and stylistic attributes. Though variously defined, this music can be identified simply through a conceptualised content that interpretatively represents an idea related to Buddhism. With the understanding of ‘emptiness’, a more universal view can be projected in the ethics of the making of Buddhist music. Virtuality as an integral part of reality affects the making of the object in parallel with the causation of phenomenality. Buddhist music can be considered as both a phenomenal and virtual being, therefore suggesting an insight to consider separable contexts of ‘Buddhism’ and ‘music’, as music is deemed secondary to the goal of Buddhist practice. The notion of ‘emptiness’ advocates an undertaking of the ‘middle path’ for composers, musicians and audiences to access Buddhist music. Finally, this leads the study to formulate an idea of the ‘Buddhist being’ in music.

(This is a penultimate draft of my paper 'Bergson on Virtuality and Possibility'. A final version with substantive modifications is now published in Sinclair and Wolf (eds.), Bergsonian Mind, Routledge, 2021.)
https://www.routledge.com/The-Bergsonian-Mind/Sinclair-Wolf/p/book/9780367074333

My aim in this paper is to clarify Bergson's prima facie perplexing critique of possibility and bring out its richness. In service of this purpose, I shall also touch on the concept of virtuality given that Deleuze described Bergon's attitude towards the concept of possibility as approving of virtuality and disapproving of possibility. With respect to the concept of virtuality, Deleuze asserts that Bergson formulates it in a peculiar way and puts it at the heart of his philosophy. In the first part of this paper, we shall see that this claim is almost, though not completely, wrong. With respect to the concept of possibility, Deleuze contends here that Bergson (a) criticises the concept, (b) proposes applying it only to things which lack radical novelty, and (c) considers it to be the origin of all kinds of pseudo-problems. In the second part, I will examine Bergson’s critique of this concept and conclude that while (a) is true, (b) and (c) need major corrections. That said, this paper’s principal aim is not to disprove Deleuze but rather to appreciate Bergson’s critique of the concept of possibility. Part 1 will indeed examine the concept of virtuality with reference to Deleuze; however, Part 2 will analyse Bergson’s critique of possibility through an examination of its justification but also through the history of its formation and its relationship to other concepts such as nothingness or truth.

In this article, I argue that the particular configuration of such concepts as “religion,” "ritual" and "theatre" will determine how the respective field of study is approached and the issues under scrutiny are configured. It is thus necessary to determine the specific use of these concepts within theoretical approaches and to re-contextualize their meaning within the scholarly discourses’ before one can develop such analytical concepts as "virtuality" and "mimesis" through which the field of research will be organized differently. One of my major assumptions is that analytical concepts are necessary to open up and establish distinct fields of research, but only a thorough analysis and reflexive critique of the use of such concepts in various discourses allows one to shake up common assumptions and notions. In this respect my endeavor is critical and analytical. Its considerations are inconclusive and tentative. This is what I - in short- would consider as the pragmatics of theorizing rituals.

The word "ἀρετή" (virtue, goodness) was translated by the Latin word "virtus" (virtue; strength / courage) when translating the ancient Greek philosophical texts into Latin. Through Plato’s doctrine of the aretê-eidos, the Latin concept of "virtus", and then the concept of "virtual", turned out to be connected with the Platonic senses of the concept of "εἶδος", and therefore with Plato’s doctrine of three types of images: εἶδος, εἰκών, φάντασμα / εἴδωλον. In the context of Plato’s doctrine, the word image can be interpreted in three ways: 1) as an image-eidos, or prototype-sample; 2) as an image-icon, or a true likeness; 3) as an image-idol, or a seeming likeness.
The word "εἶδος" derives from the verb "εἴδω" / "εἶδον" – "to see"; "εἶδος" means not only that which is visible by physical sight, but also that which is visible by mental beholding. However, in the philosophy of Plato, the eidos, staying at the top of the hierarchy of images, is purely speculative, the perfect eternal prototype created by the Divine Mind. At the “foot” of the hierarchy of images is an eidolon, or a seeming likeness of eidos. As distinct from eidos, the true and seeming likenesses of eidos (eikon and eidolon) can be both mentally contemplated objects (for example, imprints in the “wax” of memory, paintings on the “canvas” of the soul), and things observed by physical vision (paintings, sculptures, shadows, and reflections). Thus, through Plato’s doctrine of the three types of images, the concepts of "virtus" and "virtual" turned out to be connected not only with the concept of "εἶδος", but also with the concepts of "φάντασμα", "εἴδωλον".
Since in Plato’s doctrine eidolon is an illusory, imaginary, seeming likeness of eidos, the result of falling away from the Truth (and in this sense, it is a source of lies), under the influence of the senses of the Platonic concept of "εἴδωλον", the sense "imaginary" emerged in the concept of "virtual" (among the meanings of the word "imaginary" there are such as: 1) seeming; 2) false, feigned). Perhaps the Latin verb "videre" (to see; to seem), which is connected with the verb "εἴδω" / "εἶδον" (in the form "οἶδα" it means “I see in the mind’s eye”), is also connected (through one of its meanings "to seem") with the sense "imaginary" in the concept of "virtual".

L’avvento del World Wide Web ha attivato un cambiamento di stadio all’interno delle relazioni e
dell’informazione, con la cultura mediatica appare la congettura della relazione di massa, smistata in
una rete, impossibile da localizzare. La permanenza di un auto-organizzazione in divenire, fa del
Web- e dunque della rete- un organo senza un preciso orientamento. In questo caso, l’orientamento
che abbiamo a disposizione, è quello di una realtà geometrica concentrata, ancora, sugli assi euclidei.
Sarebbe dunque, impossibile concepire la rete sotto forma di una geometria classica, così com’è
impossibile praticarne una lettura topografica. Si dovrebbe partire dalla considerazione che il network
è una parte di esperienza comune, un esserci-dasein-che si sviluppa in un con-esserci.
La condivisione è parte di un’ontologia dello spazio cyber ma, nello stesso tempo può erroneamente
indicarci la strada. La collettività partecipa allo sviluppo della rete ma, in un contesto che rimane
legato alla virtualità. Dietro lo schermo, l’individuo si esprime tramite le considerazioni di una
convivialità che in realtà non avviene. Il cyberspazio non è altro, dunque, che uno spazio virtuale
auto-organizzato ed auto-organizzante. Partendo da questa concezione, ci si stacca definitivamente da
una vetusta figura del cyberspazio come un luogo fanta-scientifico, all’interno del quale si attivano
senza sosta le proiezioni desiderative del soggetto. Bisogna invece, concentrarsi su come si sviluppi
all’interno delle pratiche sociali che, sostituiscono quelle spaziali.

The developments in Artificial Intelligence promise a world where we'll be accustomed to an ongoing relationship with machines, exempt from the boundaries of space and time. Advancements in AI are culminating in robots, computers and systems capable of understanding more languages, meanings and feelings, and acting in a human-like way. While these advancements are met with general enthusiasm, they also raise concerns. This paper discusses the representations of fears, hopes and uncertainty about the technological scenarios and digital culture in popular sci-fi movies. Starting from an overview of the latest advancements in AI research and industry, the paper focuses on films such as Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Transcendence (Wally Pfister, 2014) and Ex-Machina (Alex Garland, 2014) produced in the recent years, exploring possible futures of the man-machine/AI relationship, singling out some recurring elements that can describe the general sentiment about the coming future: questioning human beings' capacity of self-determination; questioning the idea of the uniqueness of humans; and the replacement of humans in interpersonal and private relationships.

Authors/Szerzők: Szabó Gábor, Szabó György, Vukov Jeromos, Berszán István, Máthé Dénes, Veress Károly, G. Etényi Nóra, Bakó Edit, Csonta Réka, Molnár Dániel, Szuszámi Zsuzsanna, Rácz Éva Mária, Serestély Zalán, Orbán Gyöngyi, Homa Ildikó, Sógor Árpád, Demény Piroska, Stark Gabriella Mária, Bezsenyi Tamás, Lakatos Artur Loránd
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Veress Károly (ed.): Play and Science. Interdisciplinary Dialogue 2 ‒ The volume contains the presentations held at the 2nd international interdisciplinary conference organized by the Bolyai Society at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, held on 18-19 October 2013.
x  x  x
A kötet a Bolyai Társaság és a kolozsvári Babeș-Bolyai Tudományegyetem közös szervezésében tartott II. nemzetközi interdiszciplináris konferencia (2013. október 18-19.) előadásait tartalmazza.

A fost odată ca niciodată, că de încă ar fi, n-am mai povesti… A fost o vreme când părinții și bunicii aveau vreme să le citească basme copiilor, adormindu-i cu lumea lui Făt-Frumos, a Cosânzenelor și zmeilor, învățându-i despre bunătatea Sfintei Vineri și despre a fi bun, curajos, drept, despre cum binele învinge întotdeauna răul. Dar azi, într-o fugă continuă a zilei și a nopții care nu mai ajung pentru " treburile importante " , copiii au la îndemână o largă ofertă de canale de desene animate, cu lumi fascinante, care se derulează cu un dinamism foarte departe de " au mers ei ce au mers " , fiind suficient un gadget pentru a străbate distanțe lungi. Succesiunea de imagini și culoare în ritm amețitor, versus regimul temperat și gradual intensificat al textului scris. Conectarea mentală fără efort la o altă lume versus efortul de a vizualiza și lega literele în cuvinte, unele arhaice și foarte rare, cuvintele în fraze, frazele într-o poveste, pe care ochii minții trebuie să o coloreze și să o pună în mișcare individual. Aceasta e provocarea copilului din contemporan. Iar cum firea umană este caracterizată de principiul minimului efort, se înțelege astfel că peste volumele de basme românești se așterne praful. Ce pierde copilul uitat în fața televizorului la desene animate și care este rupt de lumea basmului? Problema este mult mai complexă decât ar permite expunerea într-un scurt text. Pe de o parte, am putea spune că un copil în situația de mai sus se transformă într-un video – copil, așa cum îl numește Giovanni Sartori în Homo Videns. Imbecilizarea prin televiziune și post-gândirea (Humanitas, 2006). Termenul de video – copil definește acel copil care " și-a pierdut în mare măsură capacitatea de a folosi limbajul abstract al lui homo sapiens și, în proporție și mai mare, pe cel al lui homo cogitans, pentru a recădea în imprecizia și privitivismul cognitiv ale conversației obișnuite, ale limbajului comun " (Sartori, 149). Mai mult, ceea ce apare cu mult mai grav sunt următoarele observații: " video-copilul este marcat pe viață de o predispoziție la joc. O teză pe care o găsesc mai mult decât confirmată de experiențele privind așa-zisul hipertext. În cultura cărții, desfășurarea discursului e liniară, ceea ce înseamnă că din carte se învață consecutio, coerența discursului sau cel puțin construcția consecutivă a raționamentelor. Hipertextul este în schimb un text interactiv care adaugă textului scris sunete, culori, figuri, schițe, animații. Iar caracteristica lui principală este aceea de a nu mai avea consecutio: utilizatorul îl poate parcurge în ordinea pe care o preferă, și astfel (e opțiunea cea mai facilă) fără ordine " (Sartori, 151). Pe de altă parte, dincolo de încărcătura inițiatică valabilă basmelor din lumea întreagă, basmul are capacitatea de a îi aduce copilului o serie de conexiuni cu spațiul geografic în care se dezvoltă. Oare mai are omul contemporan nevoie de legătura cu spațiul ancestral și miturile sale în formarea sa ca individ sau se naște direct cu o calitate de cetățean universal, gata de a se plimba fără probleme în orice spațiu geografic? Național versus globalizare. Realitatea geo-politică ne demonstrează că, deocamdată, calitatea de cetățean universal rămâne o utopie. Acceptând transformarea unei utopii în realitate, care este setul de valori și credințe care va fi adoptat? Acela al națiunilor puternice capabile de a promova comercial idei și imagini? Putem pune un semn de egalitate între puternic economic și puternic socio-cultural?

ABSTRACT. Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is an intriguing piece of writing for which the concept of the virtual may usefully serve as a paradigm. Apparently, this novel seems to be just another, albeit brilliant, reinterpretation of the Faustian trade-off between eternal youth and a license to indulge in a potlatch of sinful excesses. Dorian Gray’s beauty is depicted as absolute and it is its absoluteness that both defies description in writing and calls for a picture – a
masterpiece of course – the splendour of which may be conveyed only in writing. Art and nature meet only in the absolute and the reader’s imagination does the
work of showing something which any actual instantiation would prove inevitably disappointing. This article (written in French) investigates the various and interconnected statuses
given by Wilde to virtual images (paintings and photographs as they exist as hallucinations prompted by the text into the readers’ imagination) and to the metaphysical ideal of physical beauty in mystical overtones and entangled articulations to evil, shame, violence and destiny.

With the progress of artificial intelligence, the digitalization of the lifeworld, and the reduction of the mind to neuronal processes, the human being appears more and more as a product of data and algorithms. Thus, we conceive ourselves "in the image of our machines," and conversely, we elevate our machines and our brains to new subjects. At the same time, demands for an enhancement of human nature culminate in transhumanist visions of taking human evolution to a new stage. Against this self-reification of the human being, this book defends a humanism of embodiment: our corporeality, aliveness, and embodied freedom are the foundations of a selfdetermined existence, which uses the new technologies only as means instead of submitting to them. For students and academics, In Defense of the Human Being will be of interest to those studying digitalization and artificial intelligence, transhumanism and enhancement, virtual reality and embodiment, neuroscience, psychiatry, and cultural developments.

Confrontandosi con i nuovi contesti socio-culturali, l’autrice riflette sul senso costitutivo della famiglia come fondamento dell’esserci-per-gli-altri e sull’impegno ineludibile dei genitori ad acquisire nuove competenze relazionali, per far fronte alle pressanti urgenze di un mondo che cambia rapidamente. Ciò che rende la famiglia un ‘esistenziale’ ancora insostituibile è la forza rassicurante che scaturisce dal suo essere radicata sulla cura come tratto ontologico dell’esser-ci e precondizione di qualunque forma agapica.

Comparing with the new socio-cultural contexts, the author reflects on the constitutive sense of the family as foundation of Mit-Da-Sein and unavoidable responsibility of parents to acquire new relational competences, to cope with urgencies of a rapidly changing world. What makes the family a still irreplaceable ‘existential’ is the reassuring power that arises from its being rooted on the care as ontological trait of Da-Sein and precondition of any agapic form.