Department of Psychology
PS30017 Controversies in Cognition
Living Digitally
Group 5
Lucy Forbes
Elle Georgiou
Stephanie Gibson
Presentation Outline
1.
The Mind-Body Controversy
2.
Embodiment and Presence
3.
The Contemporary Controversy
4.
Case Study (Living Digitally)
5.
Progressive Embodiment
6.
The Cyborg Dilemma
7.
Discussion
The Mind and the Body
An age-old philosophical
and psychological controversy
What is real?
How can we know it?
Can we ever know it?
(Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)
Dualism
The dualistic view of the mind-body relationship
emphasises:

Mind and body must be separate

Superiority of the mind over the body

Reality is the interpretation of the mind only

Descartes (1596-1650) argued that the mind has
no biological reality and therefore can not be
studied using scientific methods
Holism
In opposition to dualism, the holistic view of the
mind-body relationship emphasises:

The fused unity of the body and mind

The dynamic, ongoing life of unified, whole
people

Embodiment
Embodiment

Can refer to the things we consciously notice about the
role of our bodies in shaping our self-identity and our
sense of reality (Brandt, in Rohrer, 2003)

The bodily aspects of human subjectivity

Gives concrete form to an abstract concept

Used as a counter-Cartesian philosophical account of
the mind

Merleau-Ponty (1902-1961) suggested that man is
characterised as an embodied consciousness (Hartman,
2005)
Physiological vs. Phenomenological Body
Embodiment enables us to distinguish between:
An objective body i.e. a physiological entity
and
A phenomenological body i.e. some physiological body
but as we experience it
“Embodiment is not a concept that pertains to the body
grasped as a physiological entity. Rather, it pertains to
the phenomenal body and to the role it plays in our
object directed experiences.”
(Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 1999, pg. 258)
Presence

Presence and immersion in virtual environments
(VE) illustrates how embodiment helps us to
make sense of what is ‘real’

Presence is “the subjective sense of being in the
virtual place.”

The presence phenomenon
psychological research in VEs

Psychology “determines what is and what is not
virtually ‘real’”
is
central
to
(Schubert et al., 1999)
Embodied Presence
in VEs
“User embodiment is concerned with the provision of users
with a representation of their choice so as to make others
(and themselves) aware of their presence in a virtual space”
Mania and Chalmer (2004)

What can embodiment tell us about how we construct virtual
environments as our reality?

Can this be extended to explain our experiences of sense of
self and reality?

Can virtual environments provide a contemporary means to
explore the mind-body controversy?
The Contemporary Controversy

So if we exist consciously as a body, does it
need to be our objective, physiological body?

Virtual environments provide evidence that we
are able to develop a sense of our selves
outside of the physical body

What does this contribute to the mind-body
debate?

And what implications does this have for the
future?
Case Study

Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual
Worlds (Taylor, 2002)

Ethnographic study examining how digital
bodies facilitate life in a virtual world

The
: graphical and text-based
multi-user system, 2 1/2D world, thirdperson perspective, real time
Avatars in The Dreamscape

An embodiment, as of a quality or concept, an archetype
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

An image representing a user in a multi-user virtual
world
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

The material out of which relationships and interactions
are embodied
Taylor (2002)
Living in The Dreamscape
Living in The Dreamscape
Living in The Dreamscape
1. Social Life

Users do not simply roam through the space as “mind” but find
themselves grounded in the practice of the body, and thus in the
world

It is through a performance of the body, in this case via the
avatar, that one’s ‘self’ is rooted in the VE
- communication of collective sentiments

Avatar bodies don’t exist in isolation, they
exist in context
- personal boundaries (Becker & Mark, 1999)

It is through the use of the body as material in the dynamic
performance of identity and social life that users come to be
“made real”, not only to the user themselves but to others around
them - embodied social practice
Living in The Dreamscape
1. Social Life

Users do not simply roam through the space as “mind” but find
themselves grounded in the practice of the body, and thus in the
world

It is through a performance of the body, in this case via the
avatar, that one’s ‘self’ is rooted in the VE
- communication of collective sentiments

Avatar bodies don’t exist in isolation, they
exist in context
- personal boundaries (Becker & Mark, 1999)

It is through the use of the body as material in the dynamic
performance of identity and social life that users come to be
“made real”, not only to the user themselves but to others around
them - embodied social practice
Living in The Dreamscape
1. Social Life

Users do not simply roam through the space as “mind” but find
themselves grounded in the practice of the body, and thus in the
world

It is through a performance of the body, in this case via the
avatar, that one’s ‘self’ is rooted in the VE
- communication of collective sentiments

Avatar bodies don’t exist in isolation, they
exist in context
- personal boundaries (Becker & Mark, 1999)

It is through the use of the body as material in the dynamic
performance of identity and social life that users come to be
“made real”, not only to the user themselves but to others around
them - embodied social practice
2. Personal Identity

Avatars can foster different associations and forms of
self

They reflect the inner self and the social world

Users can identify their avatars as “more them” than their
corporeal body

You not only project yourself into your digital body, but
you are actually made most real, most true via it

Avatars provide the opportunity to see your ‘self’ as
others see you; a “better” version of self
3. Bodies With Limits

Living digitally raises questions about what our bodies
are, who we are, and what we can be digitally

Although embodiment helps foster identities and social
lives, avatars can also limit and constrain progressive
possibilities

The Dreamscape operates within a specific gender
dichotomy which shapes the possibilities for identity

Current graphical representations of the body are limited
Case Study Summary

Avatars are the central artifacts through which
people build their social lives and identities in a
virtual world

The avatar as a body is woven into the structure
of life in these worlds

This provides evidence for the role of ‘body’ as a
representation of the mind
Addressing the Controversy

So if we exist consciously as a body, does it
need to be our objective, physiological body?

What does this contribute to the mind-body
debate?

What implications does this have for the future?
Progressive Embodiment

“How does the changing representation of the
body in virtual environments affect the mind?”
(Biocca, 1997)

Progressive embodiment, as a result of
technological developments, may lead to the
individual becoming unnatural, a cyborg

The interface of the physical body with
technology
The Cyborg Dilemma
“The
more
natural
the
interface the more “human” it
is, the more it adapts to the
human body and mind. The
more the interface adapts to
the human body and mind, the
more the body and mind adapt
to the non-human interface.
Therefore, the more natural
the interface, the more we
become “unnatural”, the more
we become cyborgs.”
Biocca (1997)
The Cyborg Dilemma
“The
more
natural
the
interface the more “human” it
is, the more it adapts to the
human body and mind. The
more the interface adapts to
the human body and mind, the
more the body and mind adapt
to the non-human interface.
Therefore, the more natural
the interface, the more we
become “unnatural”, the more
we become cyborgs.”
Biocca (1997)
“You are already a cyborg. Everyday, without thinking, you merge
with machines and machines merge with you. Climb into your car
and you conjoin with a ton of moving metal; between you and the
road, the vehicle is perfectly responsive, an extension of your nerve
and nerves, adjusting it’s grip on the asphalt as you turn the wheel.
Log on to the Net and your body vanishes from the metaspace of
your study and pops up in a wider world. We are cyborgs when we
receive a titanium heart valve, get a MRI scan, breathe climatecontrolled air, eat processed food, or fall asleep in front of the TV and
hear the language of infomercials in our dreams…”
The Cyborg Manifesto (2005)
“It’s life Jim, but not
as we know it…”
- Spock
References
Biocca, F. (1997). The Cyborg’s Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual
Environments. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 3(2).
Becker, B., & Marl, G., (1999). Constructing Social Systems Through
Computer-Mediated Communication. Virtual Reality, 4:60-73.
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.) (1999) ‘Embodiment’, pg. 258.
Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind [online]. Available:
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/ [Accessed April 2005].
Hartman, G. (2005). Maurice Merleau-Ponty [online]. Available:
http://jmchar.people.wm.edu/Kin493/kinst08c.html [Accessed April 2005].
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind
and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
References
Mania, K., & Chalmers, A., (1998) A Classification for User Embodiment in
Collaborative Virtual Environments In: Proc. of the 4th International Conference
on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, pgs. 177-182. IOS Press: Ohmsha, Ltd.
Rohrer, T., (2003) Embodiment and Experientialism. In Geeraerts, D., &
Cuyckens, H., (eds.) The Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: University
Press.
Schubert, T., Friedmann, F. & Regenbrecht, H. (1999). Embodied Presence in
Virtual Environments [online]. Available:
http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~sth/papers/vri98.pdf [Accessed March 2005]
Taylor, T.L. (2002). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In
Schroeder, R. (ed.) The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and
Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. London: Springer-Verlag.
References
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. ‘Avatar’ [online].
Available:
http://www.bartleby.com/cgibin/texis/webinator/ahdsearch?search_type=enty&
uery=avatar&db=ahd [Accessed April 2005].
The Cyborg Manifesto [online]. Available:
www.cyborgmanifesto.org [Accessed March 2005].
The Free Online Dictionary of Computing. ‘Avatar’ [online]. Available:
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=avatar&action=Search
[Accessed April 2005].
Department of Psychology
PS30017 Controversies in Cognition
Living Digitally
Group 5
Lucy Forbes
Elle Georgiou
Stephanie Gibson