Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Can Virtual Reality World? The Uncanny Valley as Absence of Strife

Rachel Coventry

Wednesday 4 September 2024

14:40 - 15:20

TU-Small Venue

This paper questions whether a virtual reality can world in the Heideggerian sense. For the Heidegger of the Being and Time, Dasein is always engaged in a world and is not, in the first instance, a Cartesian subject encountering a pre-existing reality. Worlding belongs to Dasein but is prior to it and, as such, cannot be an activity of Dasein; rather, it allows us to engage with that which we comprehend. Worlding also belongs to other beings, particularly art. We are told that great art is truth, understood as strife between world and earth, between unconcealment and concealment. Thus, art is great when it worlds; that is, when it plays a role in generating or regenerating the world in which it has meaning. Greatness, in this sense is mediated between the work and its ‘preservers’. The work allows change or displacement to happen in the world view of a historical people. This displacement is inherently unpredictable. Virtual reality aims to create a world in which human beings can interact with an artificial 3D environment, i.e., create a virtual world. For such a reality to world in the Heideggerian sense, it would have to share features with great art. A virtual reality, however, is a predictable, pre-existing reality that emerges from its programming and devices without strife. Theorists such as Anderson (2020) have argued that Mori’s uncanny valley is “challenging revealing,” thus, buttressing Heidegger’s critique of technology. This paper develops such accounts in terms of art and strife. However, Heidegger also discussed the possibility of the confrontation with technology within art. This paper will ask whether such a confrontation within a VR is possible and how this might be manifested in terms of strife and preservation.