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Finally, I want to move beyond the physical nature of a computer and our bodily interaction with it, and discuss the virtual world itself. I want to discuss virtualization.
I see the internet is a key factor of virtualization. The screen and the interface present us with virtual horizons. The internet uses these horizons to connect screens. That connection makes what may have been a niche phenomenon, that the body is left outside of the computer, into a widespread and profound issue.
On its face the internet is a network of networks, carrying information in unfathomable quantities in a near instantaneous fashion. It is a technological miracle – however is our day to day lives it appears much more mundane. It brings information from my screen to yours. It allows me to ‘speak’ to you, to ‘reach out’ and to ‘connect’ with you through our screens. The internet affords communication, either directly or indirectly. It appears to be transporting human presence, scaling distance and time, and bridging the spatial gaps created by the physical world. That is virtualization, directly created by the internet.
There are traces of our physical world littered throughout online communication (e-mail), but as anyone who has used any form of online communication knows, it is certainly its own entity. There is no way to reduce online communication to a physical analogue – the complexity afforded by the internet is nearly infinite, and transcends any physical style or normal means of interpersonal interaction. I want to show how this transcendence gives rise to the Absolute Divide; the act of virtualization, of mediation by technology that all internet communication has, removes essential components from our normal, physical, embodied existence which we cannot overcome.
I want to start with a classic philosophical problem: the problem of other minds. How can I be sure that other people exist? I have no immediate access to anyone else’s internal world, and never will be able to. How then can I be certain that I am not the only person in the entire history of time who has experienced conscious existence?
Merleau-Ponty has a graceful answer to this age-old question, and one that is incredible relevant to our discussion of virtualization and of the internet as the genesis of virtualization. He argues that someone could only believe that they are the only mind if they “succeed in tacitly observing [their] existence without being anything and without doing anything, which is surely impossible.” To really believe, Merleau-Ponty says, that other minds do not exist would require never once acting upon or believing in an observation of another person. But in the standard argument, the “philosopher cannot avoid dragging others with [them]” in claiming that they do not exist in the first place. To claim they do not exist is to acknowledge that they may exist – and the argument falls apart.
What Merleau-Ponty is suggesting is an understanding of others that is inherent in our everyday lived experience. Overly “objective” thought, as in the philosopher’s questioning of other minds, disregards basic truths about existence which are so evident that objectivity overlooks them. Merleau-Ponty does not overlook them, but makes them the foundation for his theory.
He continues, noticing that “the other’s body as the bearer of behavior” is one of the most obvious cultural facts that there is. We observe other’s behaviors, and construct a culture with them. We label the purpose of objects, teach each other skills and trades, and engage in our communal civilization through behavior. Through my body as the subject of my perceptions I can understand other’s bodies, and therefore their behaviors. He says that when I witness anther, “my world is no longer merely mine, it is no longer present only to me, it is present to X, to this other behavior that begins to take shape in it.” It is natural to see another body as a “place” for elaboration, having a “certain ‘view’ of the world,” a “certain handling of things.” Merleau-Ponty is tapping into the basic attitude with which we all approach our world – positing other minds as existing as a basic fact, due to the underlying, immediate realization that their bodily existence signifies.
What this means is that as my body “perceives the other’s body” it “finds there something of a miraculous extension of its own intentions, a familiar manner of handling the world.” My body and the body of another are both essential to this understanding. My body as the subject of my perception, which guides me through the world and to another body, giving me the understanding that the other body is the same as mine.
When I engage with another body, Merleau-Ponty points out that we “construct through our own situations a common situation,” a common project, which we then share. As in a good conversation, “my thought and [theirs] form a single fabric,” where “the other person is no longer for me a simple behavior in my [visual] field, nor for that matter am I a simple behavior in [theirs].” Instead we “coexist through a single world” through the act of sharing the project of a dialogue.
Here is where an issue arises; “we are not equally committed” to any shared project, Merleau-Ponty says, because we hold our unique perspectives on it. Each person “projects” the shared single vision, but from their own conscious point of view. Merleau-Ponty points out that the only solution, and the natural solution, is to “establish a pact” to “commit to living in an interworld where I make as much room for the other as I do for myself.” I would call this trust – trust that I will do more than merely assume you exist, but give you space to exist within my own existence. Merleau-Ponty points out that such “coexistence must be in each case lived by each person,” meaning that in order for the shared project to be successful, there must be equal investment by both parties. It takes two to have a conversation. Due to the natural understanding we all have of each other, that each other exist and behave and have bodies, mutual investment is the clear solution to our individuality – to the fact that no matter what I do, I will be the only witness to my private intersubjectivity.
When the mutual agreement is broken, and the “coexistence” is not lived by each person equally and each person continues to operate within their own “private world,” the project will not be successful. It is “like two players playing on separate chess boards a hundred miles apart.” There has been a collapse of mutuality, and any mere positing of the other as a body with a consciousness, such as playing them in chess from a distance, becomes a meaningless formality. Merleau-Ponty insists that there must be a coexistence, a shared understanding that within each private world there will be space made for another, in order for a shared project to be successful.
As the internet has become a primary channel for communication, it has become a platform upon which people undertake shared projects. They send messages, participate in online groups, use social media, video conference, etc. People have become comfortable positing the existence of other bodies with or without perceptual or physical proof, and have become comfortable entering into agreements of coexistence in a shared virtual world. All through the medium of the screen and an interface, over the internet.
Here is where I see a contradiction. I have already laid out how screens, and therefore the virtual world in which the internet exists, do not play by the same rules as the physical world. There are no physical or spatial horizons. Instead there are only virtual horizons, representing conceptual possibility. Our interactions with these screens are through an interface, which is only able to act within the virtual-horizonal framework, leaving out the body and each of our respective experiences of embodiment. Perception is reduced in both horizons and in action, leaving us with only a narrowed version of our entire existence. Merleau-Ponty closes his chapter on others by saying that if we understand “the body, the world, the thing, and others,” then “there is nothing more to understand.” In the virtual world, powered by the internet, there are no bodies. The world has been reduced to only the virtual-horizonal structure. The thing is nothing other than to act upon, by the interface. Yet we trust that we “understand” the other enough to enter into shared projects through this medium, where we have nothing else to lean on.
I have come to the backdrop by which the absolute divide becomes the clearest. The nature of the screen, the interface, and the internet create a contradiction. We are not able to fully understand one another yet enter into projects which require mutual trust. There is a divide in our virtualized experience. That divide is all around us, in how we communicate online, how we use our technology, and how that technology returns to affect our physical embodied world. And due to the nature of the divide, it is unsolvable. Virtuality requires the body to turn away from itself. Disembodied we face the divide, unable to remedy it without our bodies, stuck in a perpetual state of unsuccessful coexistence.
This is not to say that all virtual projects are doomed to fail. My conclusion is much more general – that virtuality itself inhibits our mutual undertaking of shared projects. Virtualized communication is hard. It is certainly more difficult than physical communication. Yet we ignore the difficulty, claim that the virtual world is an exact approximate to our lived world. We disregard that online we are divided – that no technological miracle is going to replace physical existence.
Today, as virtual communication is more necessary than ever, I would be the last to recommend avoiding virtual interaction. Instead, I would encourage observation. To look and feel how the virtual world is not built for us, is not catering to our physical selves. We can use virtualization as a tool, but it will never replace our physical existence. It may be the best we have at times, but we all must stay aware of our primary state: that we are embodied beings, with our body acting as the subject of our perception, living in and towards the beautiful, physical world.