The Ethical Dimensions of Virtual Reality

This chapter discusses the ways in which cultural and epistemic fears over virtual objects and environments emerged in the early 1980s as the fear of covert artificial reality was posed in literature and film. Though the promise of VR as a fully immersive alternative reality was let down by the lack of computing power to achieve such a vision, ethical concerns increasingly focused upon the way in which virtual objects have begun to bleed into our public life through phenomena such as ‘deep fake’ videos and chatbots, which when used maliciously threaten personal privacy, dignity, political security and public trust in the norms and institutions of democratic governance. The cghapter then examines the potentially negative behavioural impacts of VR upon human-agent and human-computer interactions (in terms of privacy, health, behaviour and well-being) and questions whether VR can be employed to stimulate prosocial and morally beneficial behaviours amongst users and their online and offline social networks.