Abstract

I show how certain ordinary image experiences reveal an extraordinary bodily ability: the ability to travel to any viewpoint on the real world. I develop this idea by drawing a phenomenological distinction between an actual virtual perception and a possible empirical perception. I then connect actual virtual perception to an unconstrained ability to travel that resides in the virtual body. Far from depending upon the imagined extension of the motion of the empirical body, this ability is already exercised in the discovery of any empirical body and its constrained motions. The domain available to actual virtual perception coincides with the whole of what is real. I explore what this implies for viewpoints remote in space and time. If each embodied ego has the whole world as a domain for virtual perception, the empirical perceptions had by others at remote viewpoints are a priori open to coincidence with my actual virtual perceptions. In imaginative understanding, I can virtually transport myself to remote viewpoints without thereby opposing a possible world to the real world or entertaining any changes to the latter. When I imagine remote events, I am envisioning what I would actually see, not if the world were different and I were there, but if I had an adequate mirror.

Presenters

Kenneth Knies
Associate Professor, Philosophy, Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

The Form of the Image

KEYWORDS

Travel, Virtual, Body, Imagination, Mirrors, Phenomenology

Digital Media

Videos