Why VR experience is nonveridical
Though it seems intuitive that virtual reality (VR) experience is nonveridical, and though this is widely assumed in the empirical literature (see e.g. Maselli & Slater 2013), recently some philosophers (e.g. Chalmers 2017, 2019, 2022, Lee 2024) have defended virtual veridicalism, the view that VR experience is veridical. In this presentation I offer three arguments for virtual nonveridicalism, the view that VR experience is nonveridical, while critiquing current defenses of virtual veridicalism. I begin with a brief characterization of perceptual experience in VR, focusing on visual experience in particular. I then offer three arguments for virtual nonveridicalism: the arguments from language, from paradigmatic features, and from bodily responses. Briefly, the first maintains that the ease by which we apply the language of nonveridicality to VR experience, in particular to the sense of presence VR elicits, suggests that it is nonveridical. The second argument maintains that VR experience shares various features with paradigmatic cases of illusion (e.g. resistance to what one believes or knows, seeming to possess properties they lack, and depending on limited spatial viewpoints), so that if these paradigmatic cases are genuinely illusory, VR must be too. The final argument maintains that various bodily responses in VR - including actions e.g. pointing at virtual objects, and automatic behaviors e.g. motion sickness - indicate that VR experience is nonveridical. I conclude the discussion by highlighting two pending issue for nonveridicalists. First, there is a question about where to locate VR experience exactly on the spectrum of nonveridicality, since VR experience shares salient features with cases of illusion, hallucination, and picture perception. Second, there is the question about the nature of virtual objects e.g. whether they are real or fictional, which can alter our verdict on whether virtual objects are perceived at all.