Virtual and Augmented Realities as Symbolic Assemblies

TL;DR

This paper redefines virtual and augmented realities as symbolic assemblies that are dynamic, cognitive, and semiotic, emphasizing their role in simulating and extending human understanding rather than existing as separate substances.

Contribution

It introduces a semiotic framework based on Peirce's theory to conceptualize VR and AR as symbolic assemblies, challenging substance-based views and extending the understanding of these technologies.

Findings

VR as a synesthetic experiment that influences senses and understanding

AR as a hermeneutic device that extends thought activity

Critique of extended mind theory in the context of AR

Abstract

Against all attempts that consider virtuality as a substance (a parallel or alternative reality) or as a modality (like potentiality or possibility), we want to defend the pragmatic point of view that it is rather a dynamic cognitive and sensitive interaction with reality. More precisely, we show that the ``virtus'' is an operating capacity that produces simulations of real and fictional contexts to experiment with their effects. Based on Peirce's semiotics, we define virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as mixed realities made of ``symbolic assemblies'', that is to say, structures of signs assembled by processes of computation and meaning (semiosis). We show that VR can be defined as a synesthetic experiment that does not reshape reality itself, but rather the senses and understanding we already have about it. In conclusion, we criticize David Chalmer's extended mind theory by distinguishing between knowledge and information, and we try to redefine AR as a hermeneutic device that extends not the mind itself, but the activity of thought by adding symbols to read in the world.