An Interpretation Of Relationship Between Mind And Body In Virtual Reality

A series of disputes have been brought up by various scholars on whether the body is separated with the mind or not in virtual reality.This paper aims to clarify the body-mind relationship in virtual reality and attempts to explain it with the theory of Don Ihde,a technological phenomenologist.The paper is divided into three parts.Firstly,the first part expounds the meaning and characteristics of virtual reality technology as well as two different virtual reality systems.Secondly,it points out the reasons why virtual reality technology is different from traditional media.Thirdly,it defines virtual reality and dates back to the earliest philosophical description of virtual reality.Finally,it analyzes the connotation of virtual reality and the relationship between virtual technology and humans,and probes into the changes in the interactive modes between virtual reality technology and humans from the perspective of technological phenomenology.Thus,this paper answers the question why the body-mind relationship can be reconstructed in virtual reality.The second part explores the separation of the body and the mind in virtual reality.It analyzes the unique phenomenon of the body's “absence”and the mind's “presence” in virtual reality and the reasons for this phenomenon.The philosophical description of the body's “absence” can be traced back to Plato.After that,many philosophers put forward different views on this issue.However,these discussions only stay at the ideological level,while the emergence of virtual reality technology brings this issue into the application level for the first time.As a result,many scholars from scientific and the philosophical circles have tried to prove the possibility of the body's “absence” in virtual reality.In this utopian philosophical carnival,the argumentations on the body's “absence” in virtual reality,such as the relationship between reality and virtuality,and the conditions of the virtual body's “presence”,have gradually appeared in people's vision.The third part criticizes the view of the separation of the body and themind in virtual reality using Don Ihde's technological phenomenology.The separation of the body and the mind has been criticized by many philosophers.They have interpreted the problem of the body-mind relationship that has not been well solved for centuries from the perspective of body-mind unity.In general,these philosophers agree with the body's dominant position and uphold the view of body-mind unity.Similarly,the emergence of virtual reality technology seems to have an impact on these traditional views of body-mind unity,but Don Ihde's technological phenomenology has solved this problem to some extent.Technology has a nature of embodiment,and the body is interdependent with technology.Don Ihde used the method of multiple stability in phenomenology to clarify that the body is in a state of presence instead of disembodiment in virtual reality.In other words,even if virtual reality technology can achieve interactivity and immersion in a real sense,it can never realize “disembodiment”.Virtual reality can be meaningful only when it can extend the perceptions in it to the real world.