The Trouble with the Virtual

In the world of technology, telepresence, synthetic environments, etc., the immediate—and troublesome—association of the virtual is with the concept of virtual reality. Yet even a cursory look at the virtual reality praxis shows us that it consists in simulation or fabrication of images through the stimulation of human perceptual apparatus (and the parallel or subsequent immersion of the subject of sensory perception). Even an inexperienced ontologist intuitively knows that there is more to virtuality than stimulation or simulation. The purpose of this paper is exactly to explore the nature of virtuality and its relation to the actual. What will be needed in this exploration is, first, the overcoming of the dichotomy between existence and nonexistence (the dichotomy already undermined by the long tradition of studies in various kinds of the so-called non-existent objects), and secondly, a mutatis mutandis acceptance for the humanities of what Bruno Latour proposes for science and calls relative existence: “existing somewhat,” “having a little reality” (156).

A profound account of virtuality has been given by Gille Deleuze in Difference and Repetition and in Bergsonism. Deleuze begins his analysis of virtuality with the concept of Idea (-as-structure) or problem which tends towards actualization/solution. What, however, precedes the Idea-as-structure is the relation as the possibility and basis of any structure at all. It is from the concept of relation that I want to develop the concept of the virtual. This is not a theory contradictory or incompatible with Deleuze’s—on the contrary, this paper fully recognizes the validity of what Deleuze says in his analyses. My aim is rather to explore the infrastructure of virtuality: just like nano-analysis will give us a more adequate insight into the structure of the matter, so the analysis of constituents more basic than idea will give us a more comprehensive ontology of the virtual. Such an approach aims also against limiting the idea of virtuality to the kind of cybernetic concept proposed by Levy, ¹ who I think overemphasizes the importance of the problem-solution vector of Deleuze’s theory.

Relations

Still, to begin with ideas construed as problematic structures would mean to neglect a more basic “stuff” of virtuality, and—as I intend to show—also an important channel of interaction between the actual and the virtual. This basic stuff of virtuality, its “wiring” which is primary to ideas, is made up of relations. For the sake of this discussion, it is not necessary to distinguish and separately analyze various known types of relations (such as spatial, causal, quantitative, qualitative, etc.). Suffice it to say in general that relation is a primeval intervention of logos into chaos. ²

Irrespective of the types of objects related—whether material, abstract, intentional, virtual, etc.—there is one feature common to all kinds of relations, namely that they are in a primary sense logical. By saying logical I do not refer to the science of calculus, or to any kind of logic proper, but to the inherent reference of any relation to logos, the potential presence of a mind—not any particular, individual mind, but mind in general (what Peirce would call a potential mind or Quasi-Mind). In this sense, relations in their existence are relative to the mind, while material objects are not. In other words, while material objects (in their physical, purely material rather than cultural constitution) exist independently of any reference to a mind—i.e., independently of any statement or thought about them—relations that occur among those objects are relative to the mind. ³ It is to be emphasized that relative to the mind does not refer to any particular, individual, or actually existing mind. Being relative refers to mind construed as a general condition for existence or cultural identity, what Rescher calls generic dependence:

The “being” of unactualized possibility does not inhere in its relation to this or that specific mind, but to its conceivability by mind-in-general, in terms of the linguistic resources that are a common capability of intelligence as we know it. This independence of any specific mind establishes the...