The Metaverse Is Not Morally Neutral Technology

From Thomas Holman on The Public Discourse.com (Oct. 10, 2022):

French philosopher Gabriel Marcel’s writings on “intersubjectivity” help us see why the metaverse impedes our ability to grasp reality’s most important truths. When every aspect of how I present myself to others is a choice, all my relations become objects of manipulation. Without the authentic connections of involved, concrete, and personal relationships, I become irretrievably disconnected from reality.

In a recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, former Amazon executive and metaverse promoter Matthew Ball claims that the advent of the metaverse should not be alarming, because “as with almost all technologies, it is neither moral nor immoral.” According to Mr. Ball, once this augmented version of the internet becomes widely available, “customers can choose to accept or reject” this new technology, becoming “co-authors” in the history of the future. Once again, a powerful corporate voice is reassuring us that we will remain in control while using their technology. Can we take Mr. Ball at his word? Is the metaverse really a morally neutral innovation?

But before we analyze whether the metaverse has ethical significance, we need to clarify what the metaverse is and how it differs from other online interactions. According to Forbes magazine, the metaverse is a “combination of the virtual reality and mixed reality worlds accessed through a browser or headset, which allows people to have real time interactions and experiences across distance.” In essence, it is an online environment augmented and made more immersive with virtual reality technologies. You might think of it as a combination of your social media platform and a video game. Your social network becomes like an online meeting or party where your “avatar” (a three-dimensional image that you choose for yourself) interacts with other avatars in a curated digital environment.

Thankfully, philosophy provides us with a host of conceptual tools to analyze this kind of technology. One thinker who can help us understand the meaning of a technology like the metaverse is the twentieth-century French philosopher Gabriel Marcel.

Intersubjective Reality

Marcel’s philosophical approach is difficult to pin down. Known as a “Catholic existentialist,” he stands astride several intellectual currents that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. For our purposes, a key theme of his thought is his attempt to ground his metaphysical outlook in the intersubjective (that is, in the relations between persons). For Marcel, I can only know reality insofar as I get outside myself and engage with you. René Descartes’s vaunted “I think, therefore I am” is a philosophical trap for Marcel: by using the subjective thought as a conceptual starting point for knowledge of reality, I put myself at risk of being cut off from reality. I may get stuck in an ego trap, and no further philosophizing can provide an escape.

If we grant Marcel this intersubjective basis of reality, new technologies like the metaverse present certain difficulties. If reality in some sense is an unfolding between persons, the structure of an augmented reality platform must have some very fundamental philosophical implications. The key question becomes: what is the nature of our relationship when we encounter each other in the metaverse? Before we pose this question, however, we must first examine the inner workings of Marcel’s intersubjective paradigm.

To illustrate what he means by an intersubjective constitution of reality, Marcel invokes a classic play by Pierre Corneille in which the main character (who happens to be Caesar Augustus) grapples with a recently unveiled assassination plot. At first glance, the necessary reaction for a Roman emperor is obvious: kill everyone involved. But upon deeper reflection, Corneille’s Augustus realizes that he cannot, in good conscience, simply kill those who plotted against him, for he has been involved in many such plots himself. And who can count the number of soldiers who have died trying to achieve his goal of becoming emperor and expanding the empire? Indeed, his career has been nothing if not a bloodbath.

Through this “second reflection,” Augustus is able to step outside himself, to see things as others might, to engage with their point of view, and to understand them in a deeper sense than he might have otherwise. Augustus is changed as he becomes involved with the mysterious depth of these thinking, willing, acting persons. Rather than have the knee-jerk reaction that one expects of a Roman emperor who has just been threatened with murder, Corneille’s Augustus exemplifies what Marcel calls “creative fidelity.” That is, by exercising his freedom to get outside himself and engage with other persons, he puts himself in touch with that unimaginably vast potential that constitutes his personhood in the highest sense.

High political drama aside, Marcel’s teaching is clear. To connect myself most fully to reality, I must be involved and engaged with other persons. This requires that I open myself to the possibility that who I am and who you are become fundamentally changed by our interaction. Through the (often unpleasant) give-and-take of living our lives with others, we become more fully ourselves, even if things don’t unfold exactly as we might want.

This fascination with the philosophical significance of the intersubjective has deep roots in Marcel’s biography. His visceral distaste for the eminently abstract philosophy that was so common in the early twentieth century arose out of his experience in the First World War. As a worker for the Red Cross, his primary duties included investigating the whereabouts of soldiers who had gone missing in battle. Every single request that came across his desk was a “heart-rending personal appeal.” In most cases, he ended up reporting deaths to the families who had come to him hoping against hope for the safe return of their sons. Each case on which he worked became real in a way that casualty statistics or philosophical appeals about the justice of the cause could never capture. He became involved with each and every case; every distraught family member meant something that could never be analyzed in the abstract.

At this point, one might be asking: doesn’t Marcel’s philosophy actually support the goals of those who promote the metaverse? If being is founded on my connections with other people, doesn’t Meta’s goal of “bringing people closer together” actually help strengthen one’s grasp on reality? Wouldn’t more quality personal interactions online actually enhance reality? In other words, what is it about the metaverse that distorts reality? [read more]