NAMING AND REFERENCE: WAYS OF IDENTIFICATION OF THE SUBJECT IN THE METAVERSE

Medvedeva M.A., Gavrilina E.A.

Abstract

Virtual reality, as concretized in the notion of Мetaverse, connects the Internet space with the concept of possible worlds, traditional for philosophical thought, and the active formation of the digital environment, with which modern man is not just in contact, but interacts on a daily basis, requires the analysis of identification in the context of the virtual. The problematics of the research concerns the ontological status of the subject in digital space, as well as the socially determined correlation between the physical individual and his or her named “digital twin”. The paper draws a parallel between virtual space and the concept of possible worlds, which allows us to consider the process of subject identification in the Мetaverse as one of the examples of transworld identity. The object of the study is the phenomenon of subjectivity and self-identity of an individual in virtual reality, and the subject is the semantics of possible worlds as a theoretical solution to the problem of identification in the space of Мetaverse. The goal of the study is to identify the way in which a subject can be identified in a Мetaverse through the use of the semantics of possible worlds, the causal theory of names and the concept of narrative identity. The conducted research reveals the iconic structure of virtual reality. It is shown that at the everyday level, users are able to identify digital and physical identities thanks to the communicative network: through mediators and a subject-author who has established the referent of the digital double, they interpret avatars as characters in a narrative, correlating image fragments and digital traces with the named symbolic construct.

Keywords

мetaverse; identity; subject; digital twin; possible worlds; reference; narrative identity.

DOI: 10.31249/scis/2023.03.07

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