Virtual Presence and Descartes’ Last Stand
Are we fully ‘present’ in a virtual world when we are playing in VR? Or does a VR headset finally turn us into the detached spectators Descartes always said we were? According to Hubert Dreyfus, the epistemological concerns that were largely abandoned by philosophers in the twentieth century, have become very relevant again in the twenty-first century. The reason for this, is the possibilities of telepresence and virtual presence: the ability to be present in a place where you are not actually, i.e. bodily, present. This type of presence can take the form of, for example: joining a Zoom meeting, controlling a drone in some distant location, or inhabiting a virtual world by means of VR. In this paper, I want to examine the problem Dreyfus notes with virtual presence and see whether it is indeed a real problem when it comes to virtual reality. I will argue that it is not, with the help of Heidegger’s analysis of tools, state-of-mind and care in Being and Time. Similar to how using a hammer plugs us into a significant network of references, so does playing in VR plug us into a network of virtual significance.
In On the Internet, Dreyfus starts his investigation of telepresence with the following question: “What would be gained and what, if anything, would be lost if we were to take leave of our situated bodies in exchange for telepresence in cyberspace” (Dreyfus 2009, 51). He relates telepresence to Augustine’s emphasis of inner life and Descartes’ “modern distinction between the contents of the mind and the rest of reality” (2009, 52). For Descartes, sensations caused by the ‘outer world’ are first passed to the brain and from there on to the mind. And citing people with phantom limbs as evidence, I can even question the direct experience of my own body. Descartes, as read by Dreyfus, understands our relation to the world and even our own bodies as an indirect relation. Only the contents of our minds are directly given, the rest is given indirectly, representational.
According to Dreyfus, when using telepresence, our relation to the world is reduced to the narrow, indirect connection Descartes presumed us to have naturally. In order to fully understand Dreyfus’ criticism, we have to distinguish telepresence – being indirectly present in another physical place – from virtual presence – being present in a place that is itself not at all physical, but virtual. In his 2001 article “Telepistemology: Descartes’ Last Stand”, Dreyfus explains his criticism of telepresence by using the example of Telegarden, a digital project where people can log in to a robot in order to tend to a garden in a museum in Austria. Normally when you walk through a garden, you have no reason to doubt its reality. You are bodily present there, which means you can see, smell and feel the garden all around you. In the case of Telegarden, however, you are of course not physically there, so who says that there even is a physical garden that you are walking through with a physical robot?
Dreyfus expands on this criticism in the second edition of On the Internet. His criticism hinges on the idea that bodily presence brings with it the possibility of optimal grip regarding a specific situation. Our feeling of reality depends on this feeling of optimal grip, which in turn depends on bodily presence. As Dreyfus puts it: “Its [(the body’s)] ability to get a grip on things provides our sense of the reality of what we are doing and are ready to do[.]” (Dreyfus 2009, 72). The answer to the question of what is lost in telepresence, is thus answered by Dreyfus in the following way: “What is lost, then, in telepresence is the possibility of my controlling my body’s movement so as to get a better grip on the world” (Dreyfus 2009, 60).
However, Dreyfus also expands the scope of his argument here from telepresence to virtual presence. In a new chapter on the game Second Life, he explicitly discusses the notion of being present in a virtual world and submits it to a similar line of criticism. Does virtual embodiment provide a good substitute for actual embodiment? Dreyfus thinks it does not. Again, embodiment plays a crucial role here. Indirect communication of moods through our avatar means that it is impossible to acquire the required grip on social situations. The conclusion: A lack of bodily presence in a virtual world prevents the possibility of ever getting optimal grip on a virtual situation, which would in turn prevent an experience of virtual reality as reality.
Dreyfus’ claims concerning the presence of virtual presence and the reality of virtual reality stem from a specific reading of phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus on the latter in order to argue that a less dismissive view of virtual presence is possible based on a reading of his philosophy.
Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit
Dreyfus’ understanding of optimal grip has a basis in a specific reading of Being and Time. In Being and Time, Heidegger famously makes a distinction between Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit. This distinction relates to two different ways of relating to the world around us, that is, theoretical and practical, respectively. In Being and Time, Heidegger prioritizes the practical attitude:
The kind of dealing which is closest to us is as we have shown, not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of ‘knowledge’. (Heidegger 1962, 24)
This practical attitude is different from the theoretical view, which sees everything it encounters as what Heidegger calls Vorhanden. This attitude will regard any being it encounters as an object, a thing, with certain properties, like heaviness, shaped in a certain way, etc. that we can discover by looking at it. This attitude of merely looking at things is the attitude of the theoretical view: “Theoretical behavior is just looking, without circumspection” (1962, 99). This is, as said, not the way we primarily relate to our environment. And it is close to the way Descartes would describe our natural relation to the world, and if we follow Dreyfus, the way we relate to the world through telepresence.
In the practical relation that we first and foremost have with the world, we don’t regard the beings we encounter as mere things, but we encounter what Heidegger calls Zeug, or tools. Tools never exist in isolation; any tool refers to a multitude of other beings. The pen refers to paper, to ink, to the grocery list I am writing with it etc. These references are not like features of an object, they are part of the being of the pen, it is what makes us understand the pen as a pen. This totality of referencing equipment, to which the pen belongs, is therefore always already discovered before the individual pen. The tool can always only be understood from the whole to which it belongs. This referring to other beings is not some accidental feature of tools, it is a fundamental characteristic of the being of tools, which Heidegger calls Zuhandenheit. My proper understanding of a tool depends on me knowing my way around in this referencing totality. I do not grasp the being of a pen by looking at it and studying its properties, but by picking it up and writing with it.
Significance
So, in his analysis in Being and Time, Heidegger indeed seems to favor what Dreyfus would call embodied optimal grip, over theoretical onlooking. Yet, following Matthew Ratcliffe’s reading of Heidegger, I would argue it is a mistake to think that Heidegger takes this way of coping to be the essence of the way human beings relate to their world. Similar to how Descartes, at least in Dreyfus’ reading, misinterprets the human relation to the world as an all too narrow theoretical relation, I argue Dreyfus’ understanding of it as acquiring and embodied optimal grip is equally narrow. To cite Heidegger himself, looking back at his analysis of Being and Time three years later:
It never occurred to me, however, to try and claim or prove with this interpretation that the essence of man consists in the fact that he knows how to handle knives and forks or use the tram. (Heidegger 1995, 177)
So how should we understand the distinctively human way of relating to the world that Heidegger wants to lay bare? Ratcliffe gives the following characterization:
[W]e find ourselves in a world where things matter to us in a range of different ways and, in the context of that world, we pursue certain concrete possibilities. It is only in virtue of pursuing these possibilities against the backdrop of an already significant world that we are able to make sense of the readiness-to-hand of equipment. (Ratcliffe 2012, 147)
The basis for Ratcliffe’s characterization can be found in the first page of division 1 of Being and Time: “That Being which is an issue for this entity in its very being, is in each case mine” (Heidegger 1962, 67). This means, crucially, that my existence is not something that is predefined, set in stone, but something that I have to take a stand on, that is an issue for me. I exist as fundamentally open to different possibilities. My relation to the world accordingly to be understood as being delivered over to a context which is significant for me because it shows itself as a world of possibilities. Only from the prior discovery of this world as a significant whole, can beings then show themselves as either ready-to-hand or present-at-hand:
Dasein, in its familiarity with significance, is the ontical condition for the possibility of discovering entities which are encountered in a world with involvement (readiness-to-hand) as their kind of being[.] (Heidegger 1962, 120)
The being-in aspect of being-in-the-world should thus be understood as signifying a disclosive relation, in such a way that things are able to matter to us in one way or another. Heidegger uses the term Befindlichkeit or state-of-mind to describe this type of relation:
Existentially, a state-of-mind implies a disclosive submission to the world, out of which we can encounter something that matters to us. Indeed from the ontological point of view we must as a general principle leave the primary discovery of the world to ‘bare mood’. Pure beholding, even if it were to penetrate to the innermost core of the Being of something present-at-hand, could never discover anything like that which is threatening. (1962, 177)
Hence, being-in-the-world means being in a certain state-of-mind, being attuned to the world in a certain way. The whole fact that things can matter to us, is grounded in this state-of-mind. That this is connected once again to our own being always being an issue for ourselves becomes clear in Heidegger’s analysis of a specific state of mind, namely fearing. He analyzes the phenomenon from three points of view: that in the face of which we fear, fearing and that about which we fear. That in the face of which, the fearsome is always a being within the world that is detrimental and drawing close. Fearing itself is a state-of-mind which discloses the world in a certain way. That about which we fear is always Dasein, either our own or somebody else’s. About this last, important point, Heidegger writes: “Only an entity for which in its being this very being is an issue, can be afraid. Fearing discloses this entity as endangered and abandoned to itself.” (1962, 180).
All of this is summed up and comes together in Heidegger’s crucial notion of care, the term he uses to denote the Being of Dasein. The notion of care specifies that our relation to the world around us should always be understood in combination with the fact that our own being is always at issue for us. Heidegger explains this, when he says:
‘Its own being is the issue for Dasein’: This first presupposes that in this Dasein there is something like a being out for something. Dasein is out for its own being; it is out for its own being in order ‘to be’ this being. (Heidegger 1985, 294)
What this being out for itself means, is that Dasein has to anticipate itself and its needs in its relation to the world. In that sense, care means always Dasein is always ahead of itself in a world in which it is intimately involved. Therefore, Heidegger formulates the formal structure of care as: “Dasein’s being-ahead-of-itself in its always already being involved in something” (1985, 294). This structure is of course a temporal one. Out for its own being, Dasein is always already involved in the world with a past and certain existing structures, and has to anticipate its needs in the future. This structure is the necessary condition for both our theoretical and practical relations to the world around us. Hence, Heidegger writes: “‘Theory’ and ‘practice’ are possibilities of Being for an entity whose Being must be defined as ‘care’” (Heidegger 1962, 238).
Resident Evil VII Biohazard
Now, with all of this in our back pocket, I want to circle back to Dreyfus’ question and slightly rephrase it as: what, if anything, would be lost if we were to take leave of our situated bodies in exchange for telepresence in virtual reality? The way in which we answer this question from a Heideggerian perspective can no longer depend on the possibility or impossibility of smooth bodily coping, for as we have just seen, embodied optimal grip itself is only a possibility of being for an entity whose being is defined as care. Rather, the answer to this question depends on whether or not virtual reality plugs us into a significant whole, in which things matter to us in one way or another.
A hint to an answer can be provided by a clip from a Dutch video game journalist playing Resident evil VII Biohazard in VR (Power Unlimited 2017). In the clip we see the journalist repeatedly terrified by his encounters with the horrors in the game. At one point, he even throws his hands up in resignation and curls up into a semi-fetal position due to being overwhelmed by fear. Now what this shows is that the virtual world of Resident Evil VII is significant to the journalist playing this game. The relation he has to this virtual world cannot be understood as the narrow, indirect relation Descartes presumed us to have naturally, for such a relation could never have discovered anything threatening in the first place. The world presents the player with a variety of possibilities to pursue – to open the drawer or not open the drawer, to run away or to engage. Attuned to the world and these possibilities in a certain way, specifically the way of fear in the foregoing example, means that the things in the world matter to the player in a specific way. Taken this way, rather than depending solely on bodily presence, optimal grip rather is a question of how well you are attuned to a situation and the possibilities it offers.
To be clear: I have not been arguing that there is no difference at all between our relation to virtual reality and – for lack of a better word – regular reality. What I have been arguing is that the fact that we are not bodily present in virtual reality does not mean that our relation to the virtual world we are inhabiting while playing with a virtual reality headset, is not therefore necessarily reduced to the narrow, indirect, representational relation Descartes presumed us to have. Importantly, the point that I have been trying to make, is that both in our relation to virtual reality and our regular reality, we are plugged into networks of significance. Qua significance, there is no essential difference between being plugged into a network of equipment in wielding a hammer and building a shed, and being plugged into a network of virtual zombies in playing Resident Evil VII VR.
Whether Dreyfus’ crucial point that in playing Second Life, our virtual avatars are unable to directly communicate our moods to other players denotes an essential difference, is by his own admission an empirical question. Leaving aside the question of whether or not “an avatar’s gestures can be made similar enough to ours to cause a direct response in the person controlling the avatar,” imagine playing Resident Evil VII VR in co-op and hearing the response from the clip I just played, audio only. Would there be any question concerning the mood the other player is experiencing? Is there any indirectness to this?
In conclusion, what I hope to have shown today is that Dreyfus’ claim that something fundamental is lacking from our telepresence in virtual reality as compared to our regular, basic relation to the world around us, is based on an all too narrow understanding of this basic relation. Rather than the embodied optimal grip inspired by Heidegger’s analysis of ready-to-hand equipment, the more primordial relation is one of being thrown into a significant whole which presents me with possibilities. Therefore, I have argued that in using a virtual reality headset, we do have a direct connection to the content it offers us. So luckily, Descartes can go back to his slumber; it is not the time (yet) for his last stand.
Bibliography
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2009. On the Internet: Second Edition. Londen and New York: Routledge.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2001. “Telepistemology: Descartes’ Last Stand.” In The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, edited by Ken Goldberg, 48-63. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. London: SCM Press Ltd.
Heidegger, Martin. 1985. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Translated by Theodor Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1995. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, finitude, solitude. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Power Unlimited. 2017. “Tjeerd schrikt zich te pletter in Resident Evil 7 Biohazard VR.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM8TqFUpilI&t=285s&ab_channel=PowerUnlimited.
Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2012. “There Can Be No Cognitive Science of Dasein.” In Heidegger and Cognitive science. Edited by Julian Kiverstein and Michael Wheeler, 157-175. London: Palgrave Macmillan.