#30 Virtual space

How virtual is reality?

Why the talk is inspiring?

There are legitimate reasons for concern about human immersion in digital environments, the artificial character of virtual reality, and the unauthentic presence and relationships that result. However, these concerns often lead to a juxtaposition of virtual reality as fake and actual reality as real. Proceeding from the work of philosopher Henri Bergson, this talk will argue that this opposition is incorrect and gives us a distorted understanding of what is virtual and what is real.

23
february
2023

Speaker

Viktoras Bachmetjevas

How the speaker is exceptional?

Philosopher, associate professor of Vytautas Magnus University. His interests include ethics and the tradition of continental philosophy.

Graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Belgium, and obtained his PhD in Lithuania having completed a dissertation on the relationship between irony and ethics in Søren Kierkegaard’s work. He mainly focuses on the philosophy of Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas, having published several translations (including Levinas’ ‘Time and the Other’). His current interest is in the philosophical problem of virtuality.

RECOMMENDS TO READ

Matière et mémoire

Henri Bergson

Why the book is worth reading?

A book that welcomes us back to total materiality and then re-creates a new immaterial world seemingly from scratch. A strangely sobering and at the same time intoxicating book.