spatial illusions: from mirrors to virtual realityconsc.net/slides/illusions.pdf · illusions in vr...
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Spatial Illusions:From Mirrors to Virtual
RealityDavid Chalmers
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Virtual Reality
• Virtual reality technology: produces experiences as of an external reality grounded in a computer simulation.
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Virtual Reality and Philosophy
• Epistemology: Are we in VR?
• Metaphysics: What are virtual objects?
• Language: How to analyze meaning in VR?
• Value: Is life in VR as valuable as life outside?
• Religion: If we’re in VR, who are our gods?
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Virtual Reality and Perceptual Illusion
• Is perceptual experience in virtual reality illusory? Or is it veridical?
• That is: when experiencing virtual reality, are things the way they look to be?
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Spatial Illusions
• I’ll focus especially on spatial experience.
• Does VR involve spatial illusions?
• I’ll argue that it doesn’t, and use this to shed light on spatial experience and space more generally.
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Plan
• Today: Spatial Illusions: From Mirrors to Virtual Reality
• Tomorrow: Three Puzzles about Spatial Experience
• Friday: Finding Space in a Nonspatial World
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Permanent and Temporary VR
• Permanent VR: lifelong embedding in virtual reality, so that one’s experiences always have virtual causes.
• Temporary VR: short-lived experiences in virtual reality, where one’s experiences normally have non-virtual causes.
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Permanent VR and Illusion
• In “The Matrix as Metaphysics” I argued that normal experiences in a permanent VR are non-illusory.
• People have veridical experiences of virtual objects in a virtual space.
• If we turn out to be living in the Matrix, our ordinary experiences will be mostly veridical and our beliefs will be mostly true.
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Temporary VR
• What about temporary VR?
• Are temporary VR experiences veridical or illusory?
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My Claim
• At least for many users of temporary VR, many/most experiences will not be illusory.
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Mirrors and Illusions
• Is ordinary experience on looking at a mirror illusory?
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Illusion
• Illusion: An perceptual experience where things look to be a certain way, and they aren’t that way.
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• Muller-Lyer illusion: one line looks longer than the other, but it isn’t.
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Are Mirrors Illusory?
• View 1: It perceptually appears that there are objects so-arranged on the far side of the glass, when there aren’t (an illusion).
• View 2: It perceptually appears that there are objects so-arranged on the near side of the glass, when there are (not an illusion).
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Clear Cases
• In some cases, mirror experiences clearly seem illusory.
• E.g. when one doesn’t know that a mirror is present…
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Rear-View Mirror
• When driving a car and looking in the rear-view mirror: do the cars visible in the mirror perceptually appear to be in front of you, or behind you?
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My View
• Phenomenologically, it seems incorrect to say that the cars visible in the mirror appear to be in front of you.
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Illusion View
• A proponent of the illusion view will say that we judge that the cars are behind us but that they look to be ahead of us.
• Or: they look to be behind us, because “look” claims involve judgment, but that perception represents them as ahead.
• I think: this gets the perceptual phenomenology wrong.
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Mirror Illusions
• Mirrors can sometimes yield illusions, even when you know it’s a mirror…
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Key Features
• What are key features of the car case that make it a plausible case of illusion?
• Knowledge: we know it’s a mirror
• Familiarity: we’re used to using the mirror
• Action: action dispositions depend on it
• Naturalness: the scene presented on the in-front-of interpretation is unnatural.
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Cognitive Penetration
• One can argue that this is a case of cognitive penetration of perception: what one knows or believes makes a difference to how things are perceived as being
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Contrasting Pair
• There might be two near-identical cases involving a subject looking into a mirror
• In case 1 the subject know it’s a mirror — and experiences objects as being in front of the glass
• In case 2 the subject doesn’t know it’s a mirror — and experiences objects as being behind the glass.
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Belief Matters
• In these cases: depending on whether or not one believes it’s a mirror, objects seem to be ahead or behind of oneself.
• To reject cognitive penetration here: one presumably has to deny that objects ever seem behind oneself in a mirror.
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Change in Phenomenology
• Does the phenomenology (what it’s like to have the experience) change?
• I’d say yes: so cognitive penetration of perceptual phenomenology
• But if no, an equally interesting conclusion: change in perceptual represention without change in phenomenology.
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Cognitive Orientation
• I call this the cognitive orientation of perception
• Background knowledge determines the general orientation of how things seem to be in a perceptual experience, so perception changes with changes in what one believes.
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Side Viewing
• Mirror at 45 degrees in front of one: objects seem off to the left or the right
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Perceptual Adaptation
• Convex mirrors? Objects initially seem smaller/distant, but one adapts
• Inverting goggles? Initially everything is upside down, but one slowly adapts
• Immediate change with change in belief?
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Extending to Video
• Video screens (or holograms) in front showing objects behind: objects seem to be behind
• Video screens in front showing objects to the side: objects seem to be to the side
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Remote Video
• Video screens in front showing cameras attached to remote objects: objects seem to be in front of those objects.
• Video screen attached to remote robot body: objects seem to be in front of the robot.
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Virtual Reality
• What about virtual reality?
• In the experience of virtual reality an illusion? Are things as they seem to be?
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Permanent VR
• In “The Matrix as Metaphysics”, I argued that if we’ve been in a VR all our lives, things are as they seem to be
• There are still tables and chairs: they’re just constituted by computational processes (no worse than being constituted by quantum processes).
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Virtual Objects
• If we’re in a VR, we’re perceiving virtual objects in a virtual space.
• Virtual objects are real objects, though they’re ultimately constituted by computational processes.
• In a computer running VR, there really are virtual objects in a virtual space.
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Virtual and Non-Virtual
• Virtual tables aren’t the same as non-virtual tables (assuming we’re not in VR)
• Virtual space isn’t the same as non-virtual space.
• But it’s a sort of space.
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Spatial Functionalism
• Underlying this is a sort of spatial functionalism: space is what space does.
• Or: space is what plays the space role.
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Experiential Spatial Functionalism
• One sort of spatial functionalism (lecture 2): Space is (roughly) whatever causes our spatial experiences.
• Could be a quantum process, could be a computational process.
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Space as Arena of Interaction
• Another sort of spatial functionalism: space is defined by its role in governing interaction.
• A space is an arena in which things interact, with distance governing strength of interactions.
• “Distance is what there’s no action at”.
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Temporary VR
• What about temporary VR?
• What if one enters VR with/without previous experience?
• With/without knowing it’s a VR?
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VR and Mirrors
• My view: the VR case is analogous to the mirror case.
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Illusions in VR
• One can certainly get illusions in VR
• E.g. if one enters a VR without knowing it’s a VR, one will perceive objects as in front of one (in ordinary space), when the objects aren’t there.
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Misperception
• On my view: one is perceiving virtual objects (which are in virtual space), but misperceiving them as real objects in real space.
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Experienced VR User
• What about after much time in VR, when one knows one is in VR?
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Non-Illusion View
• After some time in VR, one adapts to VR, treating it as a separate space with separate objects.
• One takes the objects to be located in virtual space, as they are.
• One perceives the objects as located in virtual space too.
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Sensorimotor Contingencies
• In realistic VR the sensorimotor contingencies are different
• Movement and action involves different sorts of control, and special sensorimotor dispositions
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Cognitive Orientation
• Upon entering VR the experienced user deploys cognitive orientation to virtual space, with its own sensorimotor contingencies
• As in the mirror case, this plausibly deploys a sort of special representation
• Veridical representation of virtual space.
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Phenomenology of Virtuality
• Arguably: this cognitive orientation is associated with a distinctive phenomenology of virtuality
• E.g. associated with visible and audible but intangible objects?
• In mixed actual/virtual reality, one might have some of each
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• magic-leap-ft.jpg
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Robot VR
• What about virtual reality coming from camera on a robot body, with your actions controlling that body
• Plausibly: like the TV screen on that body.
• One is cognitively oriented to the robot, and thereby accurately perceives the space in front of the robot (whether or not there are special sensorimotor contingencies).
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Temporary Perfect VR
• What about familiar/temporary use of perfect VR, deploying the same sensorimotor contingencies as in normal reality.
• Analogous to a perfect robot case: one is cognitively oriented to the VR, and thereby accurately perceives virtual space.
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Fantastic Voyage
• Another analogy: temporary Fantastic Voyage-style shrinking, perceiving a shrunken world.
• At first (not knowing one has shrunk) one might have spatial illusions.
• But upon becoming cognitively oriented, one will veridically perceive the environment.
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VR Fantastic Voyage
• The same goes for VR deriving from a shrunken robot body perceiving a shrunken world.
• With cognitive orientation, we’ll veridically perceive that world.
• Same for VR deriving from virtual world.
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Plausibility
• I think as we use VR more and more, this view will come to seem increasingly plausible.
• There will be illusions in VR, but these will be special cases where action goes wrong.
• Normal/familiar/expert action will be correctly representing virtual space.
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Back and Forth
• What about people who go back and forth between normal reality and virtual reality?
• As long as they know which is which, their perception will be cognitively oriented, and will not be illusory.
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Language in VR
• Plausibly: The meaning of language will also switch easily between e.g. “real object” and “virtual object” (or perhaps acquire a broader content that subsumes both).
• This plausibly already happens e.g.with virtual objects in video games.
• Like a knowledgeable Twin Earth switch case: ‘water’ switches from H2O to XYZ.
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Open Questions I
• What are the precise conditions for representing virtual objects in virtual space? (When do we move from illusion to veridical perception, and in virtue of what?)
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Open Questions II
• What to say about cases of mixed perception of virtual and real environments (e.g., augmented reality)?
• If virtual objects are distinguishable: cognitive orientation for those objects, maybe with phenomenology of virtuality?
• If they’re not: cognitive orientation to a disjunctive world?
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Conclusion
• In everyday interactions with virtual reality, things are as they seem to be, much as in ordinary reality.
• This is one plank in making a general case: virtual reality is not second-class reality.
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