从虚拟现实到“元宇宙”:伦理风险与虚实共治

From Virtual Reality to the Metaverse: Ethical Risks and the Co-governance of Reality and Virtualization

随着虚拟现实、混合现实、增强现实技术的日趋成熟,区块链、人工智能以及计算机视觉、云计算、移动网络等基础性技术的发展,“元宇宙”作为新兴聚合技术概念受到广泛关注。“元宇宙”是什么?“元宇宙”有什么风险?如何负责任地治理“元宇宙”?本文尝试从“元宇宙”的概念辨析出发,解析“元宇宙”技术的实存风险,寻求共治途径。1.“元宇宙”的概念辨析“元宇宙”具有“厚重”和“想象”两种特性。

The rise of virtual reality since the 1990s together with the recent metaverse have formed an “ontological event” in which humans have created a virtual world that is different from the real physical world. This paper focuses on three basic issues of virtual reality: the ontological status of virtual reality,the epistemological status of virtual experience,and the control mechanism of virtual reality. The usual view is that physical reality has a more fundamental ontological status,that actual experience is more real than virtual experience,and that the order of the actual controls the order of the virtual. These views are reasonable,but I think the opposite thesis is more worthy of defense: virtual reality is not weaker than physical reality in ontological status,virtual experience is as real as an actual experience,and the virtual order can break away from real order to a certain extent. These facts will provide an initial defense of the three counterthemes by showing how to understand “the real”.