Ângelo Milhano

University of Évora

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose body is this, after all?’ Don Ihde – Postphenomenology and the Body Problem in the Metaverse

6 December 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The investment of the big digital companies in the concepts of “virtual reality” and “augmented reality” seems to indicate a new course of development of the various digital technologies. Taking into account their ubiquity and the dependence we have been developing towards them, the total immersion of the human consciousness in the digital seems, in fact, to be the most natural development of the digital platforms we have available today. In the unfolding of social networks as “metaverses”, in the transition from smartphones to “neuralinks”, it is possible to understand the tendency of total incorporation of technology, the same one that has marked the whole history of technological development until our days. The technological fantasy continues to be to make technology as transparent as possible: to enjoy its capabilities while eliminating, as best as possible, its sensory limitations. The relation that the human being establishes with the body when using this kind of platforms will be the target of the debate that we intend to raise with this communication. Starting from Don Ihde’s post-phenomenology, we will try to discuss the role that the incarnated body (here body) plays in the construction of a disembodied, digital “dwelling”, like the one that is prefigured in the use of the “metaverse”. How, from it, a user may create a new perception of his body, capable of transcending the limitations that are imposed on it by culture, by biological gender, or by the physical circumstances that limit its mundane existence.