Towards a Phenomenology of the Digitalization of Consciousness. The Virtualization of the Social Space

Abstract

The digitalization of the everyday experience is a process which achieves virtual reality through a process of replacing the original and authentic experience with digital artefacts: cybersex, augmented reality, revolutions 2.0. We are even proposed a full digitalization of the contents of consciousness, and the development of our own existence in virtual spaces, as a means of prolonging life indefinitely. The objective of the paper is to identify and analyze certain philosophical perspectives on the mutations at the level of the cultural model called transmodern society, following the process of "virtualization of the social space". The virtual space is non-tridimensional. The characteristic of topological distance, specific to any human cohabitation is being replaced with that of intersubjective distance, regarded as the subjective intensity of the communication. The understanding of the virtualization of social space may open new horizons of investigation in the philosophy of mentalities, cultural anthropology, communication sciences and tehnoethics.

Bioethics – Philosophy or Science?

“…Many opponents of the phenomenon of virtualization of social space (Sandu, 2003;Sandu, Cojocaru, & Ponea, 2010;Sandu 2019a;2019b;2019c), of the transition of as many interactions from the physical environment to the online one, state that practically the transition of interactions from the physical to the virtual social environment dehumanizes and draws people apart. Such technological mediation of social interactions causes our specific way of behaving in the interaction with the other to change radically, because the relationship with otherness becomes a technologically mediated one.…”

“…Next, we will analyse the interpretive adrift (Sandu, 2016) of the theoretical constructions that can be the basis of a narrative or phenomenological approach, placing bioethics in a post-Kantian and postutilitarian horizon. These approaches can form the basis of a bioethics of crisis situations, based on a social-constructionist perspective that rather takes into account the way in which individuals make sense of their situation, their context and their communicative interactions, which take place in a virtual environment, although they can no longer take place in a physical space.…”

“…We should take into account social consensus (Habermas, 1985;Sandu, 2016), including the action of influencers who play a significant role in forming social consensus, and we should also consider other instances of social construction for the ethical acceptability of an action, such as the religious discourse, the perspective of a moral and a religious ethics, but also of the secular -classical one for current bioethics. We are talking about a dialogue between bioethics of a religious origin and secular bioethics.…”

Marginal Thinking Knowledge and Communication in the Postmodern Era

“…(McLuhan, 1964, p. 51-52) We could side with A. Sandu in wondering whether the exposure to virtual media could possibly create a "digitalization of conscience" or if the technological development could determine a development of the human condition beyond what it is now, towards a "trans-human" or "post-human" state. (Sandu, 2018(Sandu, , 2019 Technicalisation and simulation indicate to a certain extent the finitude of meaning. Simulation as a global process, sets in scene representations emptied by the presupposition of a perfect present, a meaning that closes and fulfils the project, and the field of technology is not merely a prolongation of nature or of man, but is replacing them, thus showing that there is neither immanence, nor transcendence.…”

Virtual Ontology: To the Question of New World Order

“…To understand the challenges of the social order, which is an important part of the worldview, it is interesting to refer to the work of Antonio Sandu [Sandu, 2019]. The author tries to analyze the phenomenological dimension of the problem of digitalization of consciousness in its connection with the virtualization of social space.…”