Ways of Seeing
- Exploring Modern Metaphysics -

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COMPUTERS and Virtual Reality

Over 1/2 of the homes in the United States now have a computer in them, and more computers are now purchased for home than for business use. Last year more money was spent for computers in the U.S. than was spent for TVs and VCRs combined. This trend will only accelerate in the coming years.

But what are computers, really? When you read the letters of a sentence on a computer what are you seeing? Are there little plastic alphabet blocks somewhere inside the computer that are used? The answer, of course, is "no". The letters on the screen are composed of dots as placed there by the software that is being used. This is also true of the virtual reality program you might run on the computer - the scene you might move through or the game you might play is not inside the computer in any real way, but is just a series of dots on the screen placed there according to how you are operating the software.

Isn't this also true of the human being walking around in the world? According to how we operate our bodies light comes onto the retina of our eyes which move as electrochemical impulses to the brain. We then interpret these impulses as the scenery we are walking through and don't even see the impulses which make them up. The same is true for our other senses as well.

So in a sense the interaction between the world and our bodies is the ultimate virtual reality computer, and our muscles provide the controls. What then is the human being? Aren't we really just the decisions of how to operate the "controls" and the interpretations we make of the sensations that are thereby produced? This is truly a remarkable situation we are in! It is metaphysics that attempts to understand the truth of what is happening here, and also how and why.


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