This paper is about the question of whether or not virtual rape should be considered a crime under current law. A virtual rape is the rape of an avatar in a virtual world. In the future, possibilities for virtual rape of a person him- or herself will arise in virtual reality environments involving a haptic device or robotics. As the title indicates, I will study both these present and future instances of virtual rape in light of three categories of legal (...) philosophical theories on rape in order to answer the aforementioned question. I will argue that a virtual rape in a future virtual reality environment involving a haptic device or robotics should in principle count as the crime of rape; for it corresponds to rape as it is viewed under the liberal theories that currently dominate the law. A surprising finding will be that a virtual rape in a virtual world re-actualizes the conservative view of rape that used to dominate the law in the Middle Ages and resembles rape as it is viewed under the feminist theories that criticize current law. Virtual rape in a virtual world cannot count as rape under current law; however, and at the end of this paper, I will suggest qualifying it as sexual harassment instead. (shrink)

The question of how we relate to the world via technology is fundamental to the philosophy of technology. One of the leading experts, the contemporary philosopher Don Ihde, has addressed this core issue in many of his works and introduced a fourfold classification of technology-based relationships. The conceptual paper at hand offers a modification of Ihde’s theory, but unlike previous research, it explores the functional compositions of Ihde’s categories instead of complementing them with additional relational categories. The result is a (...) simplification and reduction of the analytical categories of Ihde’s theory, where alterity and background relations are ontologically reduced to ratios between the mediated relationships. The paper uses cutting-edge robotics as a hermeneutic tool in order to present this point and concludes with a discussion of the usefulness of applying static categorization to complex technology and of various challenges and limitations. (shrink)

In Technology and the Lifeworld, Don Ihde advances what he calls “formalisms” for the ways in which we experience or relate to technology. In this article, I seek to clarify the grammar of Ihde’s formalisms. Ihde’s formalisms have not been the focus of scrutiny. Rather, they have largely been received in the literature as merely aphoristic or epigrammatical devices serving to clarify what can be explained in prose. My hypothesis is that Ihde’s formalisms do not merely serve an epigrammatical function (...) but rather admit of a generative grammar that extends his postphenomenological framework. I propose a notation that adheres to six rules of syntax that can be derived from Ihde’s framework. I show that the proposed notation makes explicit the inter-relations among hidden dimensions of human–technology relations. Relying on my notation, I also suggest that the so-called cyborg turn is actually a turn away from the unharnessed syntax of Ihde’s formalisms. (shrink)