The Virtual,the Fictional,and The Real

Confronted with virtual reality,many philosophers treat it as something fictional or irreal.David Chalmers,however,raises a virtual realism which supports the reality of virtual objects and the value of virtual experience.In this paper,it is his argument regarding the reality status of virtual objects that it is we would discuss about.Ontologically,Chalmers' strategy is to justify that the virtual objects are digital objects.I shall call such strategy Digital object Argument(DA).DA has two breakdown arguments: Causal power Argument(CA)and Perception Argument(PA),which purport to prove respectively that only digital objects are able to satisfy a certain feature of virtual objects.Once either CA or PA is justified,in the virtue of DA,Chalmers could prove that virtual objects are realHowever,I shall raise several difficulties Chalmers' theory might encounter.First,directly aimed at CA,we could cast doubt on the reality of causal relation between virtual events.In Chalmers' virtual realism,virtual properties might supervene digital properties while virtual causal relations are based on digital causal relationship.In addition,PA has a problematic premise(P1)for the reason that we would not only percei ve virtual object in perception.This flaw might lead to certain perceived objects not being virtual.Chalmers constructs a counterargument in the position of his opponent,virtual fictionalists.He tries to undermine virtual fictionalists by responding this counterargument.However,with respect to virtual fictionalism,we would find the counterargument constructed by Chalmers is grounded in mistaken understanding and rephrase.Furthermore,compared with virtual fictionalism,virtual realism would suffer setbacks in at least three aspects.First,Chalmers adopts a different method from virtual fictionalism in arranging quantifier in a proposition containing virtual term while virtual fictionalism has a more economical ontology.Second,though Chalmers attempts to break the shackle given by Hillary Putnam's Brain-in-vats argument for his virtual realism,he yields limited progress.Virtual fictionalism,however,immunes from the same trouble.Third,virtual realism would incur identity problem while fictionalist might not.It is reasonable for virtual realism to claim that both physical subject and virtual subject underlie the digital structure.Nevertheless,virtual realists do not explain how could two subject with respective two data structures are identical.In conclusion,the present arguments of virtual realism fail to support the reality of virtual objects.Besides,Chalmers does not succeed in objecting virtual fictionalism.Finally,even if virtual realism is true,a bundle of difficulties are required to respond.