Abstract

What is the 'virtual'? While the 'virtual' in its traditional, metaphysical determination has been construed as something illusory or 'less real' , if the virtual poses a contemporary question, it is because the new computer-mediated phenomena for which this term is currently invoked do not lack reality, but rather have a specific reality unto themselves. For this reason, instead of trying to understand virtual reality as a secondary or illusory world, it is rather, for us, a question of determining the specific reality of the virtual or the meaning of 'virtuality.' ;By employing the work of various Continental philosophers , I argue in my dissertation that the notion of the virtual calls for a metaphysics of pure immanence and that the question of the virtual involves the digitization of reality. The virtual, however, is neither the digital nor the analogical . Rather, the virtual involves the relationship between the two. ;More importantly, instead of viewing computer-mediated phenomena as less real or illusory, one must see understand them as exposing constitutive aspects of all phenomena. For instance, I argue that one's online chat partner is no less real than the other in any intersubjective relation. In this way, I am not merely interested in attempting to characterize the nature of computer-mediated phenomena, but also try to show how virtuality involves all phenomena through both time and meaning. In this way, virtuality does not truly name any specific set of phenomena , but rather characterizes any and all possible phenomena. The virtual is not anything which appears, but rather accounts for why all appearings are partial