Understanding my Avatar: Cyberbeing, Bio-Digital Personhood, and Fictional Transcendences from an Orthodox Perspective 1 (original) (raw)

On Cyberspace and Being: Identity, Self and Hyperreality 1

2010

Does it make sense to talk about cyberspace as an alternative social reality? Is cyberspace the new frontier for the realization of the postmodern self? For philosophers Taylor and Saarinen, and the psychologist Turkle cyberspace is the practical manifestation of a postmodern reality, or rather hyperreality (Baudrillard). In hyperreal cyberspace, they argue, identity becomes plastic, ‘I can change my self as easily as I change my clothes. ’ I will argue using Martin Heidegger that our being is being-in-the-world. To be-in-the-world means to be involved in the world; to have an involvement whole that is the always already present significance of what I do. Furthermore, that the making or choosing of self is only existentially meaningful in a horizon of significance, an involvement whole. I will argue that identity is tied to community, and community involves accepting some level of already there thrownness. Every cyber-traveler will eventually have to deal with the fact of being, alw...

On cyberspace and being: Identity, self and hyperreality

Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 1997

Does it make sense to talk about cyberspace as an alternative social reality? Is cyberspace the new frontier for the realization of the postmodern self? For philosophers Taylor and Saarinen, and the psychologist Turkle cyberspace is the practical manifestation of a postmodern reality, or rather hyperreality (Baudrillard). In hyperreal cyberspace, they argue, identity becomes plastic, 'I can change my self as easily as I change my clothes.' I will argue using Martin Heidegger that our being is being-in-the-world. To be-in-the-world means to be involved in the world; to have an involvement whole that is the always already present significance of what I do. Furthermore, that the making or choosing of self is only existentially meaningful in a horizon of significance, an involvement whole. I will argue that identity is tied to community, and community involves accepting some level of already there thrownness. Every cyber-traveler will eventually have to deal with the fact of being, always already, in-the-world.

The Electronically Incarnated Human

„Virtual Art / Virtual Domains of Art”, ART INQUIRY, Volume 10, 2008

The article concerns the description of various phenomena connected with identity, which human can be subjected to in the Net. Accordingly, the processes have been presented which take place mainly within 3D electronics environment. These environments possess an ability to cause a strong immersion, which "engages" human intentionality, and also provides possibility for self-creation. For a description of the phenomena of translocating human activity to the Net, two processes have been indicated: incorporation process, i.e. receiving of an electronic body, e.g. of avatar, and existential process, i.e. human involvement in electronic environment which exceeds the utilitarian aspect. Both processes lead to the state of electronic incarnation, which is not related to any cause of being in the electronics environments, and becomes an autonomous value. Electronic incarnation combines with cultural and anthropological aspects, and has reflection in electronic art. Interrelation between common everyday activity with Net, influences a range of human involvement in the electronic environment, i.e. sometimes changing a user into a participant of immaterial events. On the one hand, such processes reach deeper in human, and secondly, electronic worlds, such as Second Life, create possibilities for finding there spiritual values, emotional life, and the sphere of feelings. Human subjected to immersion can begin specific "journey", starting in front of computer's interface, and ending in the rising of electronic personalityfinding oneself in the reality alternative to the physical world, in the electronic reality.

Real or Hyperreal? The Question of Personhood in the Cyber Space: A Philosophical Anthropology Paper

Nowadays, the cyberspace or commonly called the internet, through social media websites has become an avenue for people not just to connect virtually with others but also as a means to redefine their personhood or self-concept by creating a virtual version that is different from their physical self. Their " at homeness " in the cyberspace enable them to explore possibilities that they can never do or achieve in the real physical world. Thus, this philosophical discourse used Martin Heidegger's concepts of 'Being and Personhood', and Jean Baudrillard's concepts of 'Simulation and Simulacra' to explain the philosophy behind the distortion and reconstruction of the self-concept of the human person as seen in the social media, and to critic the projected reality of a person, particularly in Facebook and Instagram, as a form of 'simulacrum', and as a manifestation of 'inauthentic'.

Cyberspace as a New Existential Dimension of Man

Cyberspace [Working Title], 2019

Since the second half of the twentieth century, especially from the 1990s to the present, we have seen significant sociocultural changes that have mostly been influenced by information technology. In the area of information technology, it is mainly the Internet that is the essential part of all modern communication technologies such as smartphones, iPads, and so on. The Internet is a new communication space, also called cyberspace, in which we not only communicate but also work, learn, buy, have fun, and so on. It does not seem to be a mere "tool" of our new way of communication, but a dimension that becomes part of our existence. We then have to ask how our existence is changing under the influence of new technologies. How do we change the value system in cyberspace communication? What are the possibilities and risks of communication in cyberspace? These are just some of the issues that arise in connection with communication in cyberspace to which we will seek answers. In the chapter we use the phenomenological and hermeneutic method. Through the phenomenological method, we examine the basic structure of cyberspace (Clark, Ropolyi) and, using a hermeneutic method, examine the differences between communication in cyberspace and old media (Lohisse, Postman, Bystřický).

Cyber-Consciousness Between Self Perception and Body Image

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 2015

This paper deals with the ontology of mind and its objective reality of being in certain states of self modified by consciousness, which implies a loss of differentiation between physicality and object. By entering the self, the ego becomes conscious to itself. Through this paper we propose to explore a new and less studied concept, i.e. the "virtual self". The issue of creating another identity in the online environment is quite complex, and has an extremely surprising impact, since the individuals' motivations are different, not being any pattern in this regard. For example, in case of some individuals the self-consciousness changes (also become a kind of cyber-consciousness) are just a variation of the same figures which reveal the repressed aspects of real life, being no link to the real self.

Body, Soul and Cyberspace - Cyborgs, Clones and Simulations

French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1989, p.259) suggested in the mid-1980s that the ‘life or the afterlife of cinema depends on its struggle with informatics’. He predicted that digital technologies would have a dramatic impact on the technological and aesthetical development of cinema. That ‘struggle’ is evident in contemporary science fiction cinema, but it reflects not just our connection to technology, but also to religion and spirituality. My proposed paper will look at how this struggle is unfolding with regards to human self-identity, postmodern spirituality and the relationship with our world. In this context, I will investigate why contemporary science fiction rather than destroying religious sentiments, do heavily trade ‘in religious goods and thus provide a new space, a cyberspace, for religious imagination.’ (Caputo, 2001, p.68) I will further argue that over the last two decades we can observe a gradual shift from a largely dystopian treatment of machines, artificial intelligence and virtual realities to a more ambiguous portrayal that shows the opportunities as well as the dangers of virtual worlds. John Caputo had suggested that the very nature of virtual realities – in that they challenge our perception of what is real and provide a sense of something beyond – is deeply religious. This paper will therefore explore the spiritual concepts that are explicitly and implicitly played out in contemporary science fiction cinema. For example, whereas The Matrix largely relies on Judaeo-Christian symbolism – Neo as the Messiah, his girlfriend Trinity, Zion as the last remaining human city and so on – Avatar seems to draw heavily on a naturalistic, pagan spirituality. The latter is, however, also very postmodern and adapted to a cyber-universe. It is thus not surprising that so many viewers are drawn towards the basic mythic and spiritual concepts presented in a hyper-modern, technologically enhanced, cyber-world such as Pandora in Avatar. Part of this development is – as I will argue – that spirituality becomes more ‘materialistic’. We can find this ‘material’ spirituality for instance in the electronic-organic networks and the ‘Tree of Souls’ in Avatar. On the one hand nature here is mysterious and spiritual, but on the other hand it can also be measured with scientific methods. I therefore argue that what we find in contemporary science fiction is often a synthesis of spiritual and material aspects. As a consequence ideas of belief and religiosity also become progressively linked to a materialistic dimension. Yet, while spirituality becomes increasingly materialistic, we run the risk of turning the body into something mystical and ephemeral. Within virtual worlds, the body at times only remains ‘as a heavily charged trace object of a remotely remembered […] sense of the encompassing unity of natural physicality, the sense of simultaneous physical and social containment that came from a fated/unalterable relationship to one’s body.’ (Csicsery-Ronay, 2002, p.75) The statement indicates the social relationships that are linked to the body. As a consequence, it becomes clear that body and soul are by no means independent and that by making the body disposable and open to endless modifications as suggested in some of the post-humanist debates, we risk losing a sense of wholeness that identifies us as human beings. It becomes evident that the ‘encompassing unity’ is a crucial aspect of the soul which needs embodiment as much as transcendence. This is reflected by Anderson, who describes human life as ‘the spiritual saga of the creaturely soul: limited, but also expressed through physical embodiment; distressed, but also inspired through the power of spirit; mortal, but also graced with the promise of immortality through the promise of God.’ (1998, p.188) The use of religious concepts immerged in high-tech narratives reflect our own struggles with the notions of embodiment, power and mortality in a world of (almost) endless possibilities. This is why particularly the shift in our relation with technology as outlined above highlights an underlying need for spiritual meaning.

David I. Dubrovsky and Merab Mamardashvili: Adam’s Second Fall and the Advent of the Cyber-Leviathan

Humanity Enhanced, Transformed, Abolished: Christian Anthropology Encounters the Transhumanist Hope of Artificial Intelligence, 2019

In his speech "The European Responsibility, " the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili summarizes his utopia of a fulfilled humanity by presenting it as an integration of two main traditions: the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian ones. In contrast, David Dubrovsky launches a new perspective for present and future human evolution: the cyber-superman, i.e. the perfect merging of human mind and digital brain-or the bio-digital interface. "Intelligence" here is not just an artificial by-product of a highly organized technological structure, but the reproduction of mental operations through the techno-replication of the bio-brain as material substrate: the Dubrovskyan avatar. In the present article, I focus on Dubrovsky's and Mamardashvili's anthropological paradigms, and their relationship to the phenomena of cyberbeing and cyberculture. I examine the phenomenon of cyberbeing as a "built-in" feature of a bio-electronic, transhuman ontology that impacts and transforms personhood into "cyborghood" in the context of an interactive digital framework of fictional transcendences, body-deconstruction and biotechnological interplays. My aim is to develop a critical approach to Dubrovsky's cybernetic anthropology and avatar-theory, along with its meaning and implications for our world-epoch, in contrast to Mamardashvili's ontology, which proves essentially incompatible with the moment of technological singularity-i.e. with the creation of a transhuman bio-digital avatar as envisioned and prophesized by Dubrovsky.

Digital Existence -- The Modern Way to Be [2018]1

Auerbach Publications eBooks, 2021

This is an interpretative viewpoint blending perspectives to form a composite view of digital existence. The paper uses philosophy, sociology and linguistics within an ethnographic framework of contrasting cultural and cultural artefact views. Digital being and the relationship between physical and virtual are discussed. Evidence suggests acceptance of the virtual world as a location of coexistence. How technology has merged with humans so that humans have become more than their organic selves is examined. In a virtual world, digital existence is achieved through Daseinian avatars and so the concept of self is explored. There then follows a broader discussion about the online world which leads into how these new technologies become accepted by individuals and society. The influence of mass media is considered in this context. This is followed by a short analysis of the vocabulary used to describe the online world. The paper ends with a call to rethink how to view and react to the online world. Existing positions are challenged as being inappropriate given the analysis undertaken.

The ontological revolution: On the phenomenology of the internet

SOCRATES, 2016

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the 'mechanization' of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize 1 , even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late '60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata 2. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the worldwide web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. Abstract Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the 'mechanization' of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize 1 , even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late '60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata 2. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the worldwide web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities.