Articles

Abstract

The notion of the virtual has been central to the ongoing transformation of experience by digital technology over the 20th-21st centuries. In a narrow sense, «virtual reality» is an immersive simulacrum of genuine sensory experience, which may be mistaken for reality. But the concept of the virtual has a broader significance, with deep roots in the history of philosophy and psychology. The sense of «virtual» appears in one form or another in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and William James. Over historical time, the sense of the virtual has shifted from an internal or subjectively mental domain to an external one that engages our sensory data through postmodern digital media and artificial intelligence. I argue that language, whether literary or mathematical, is the unifying thread running through this history. To clarify the role that language plays in producing different virtual experiences, I analyze the interaction between language and the mind via «active reconstruction», or imaginative engagement with the content of experience.