How does quantum physics help us to problematize the problem of the real and how does it contribute to the understanding of virtual reality?

Written and published by Nihilitus

Date of publication: October 30, 2022

Virtual reality is an interactive technology based on electronic glasses that simulate the real and create an immersion effect by which the subjective relationship of the virtual operator with the external reality is altered.

The key to understanding the potential of this technology lies in the immersion and the subjective relationship of the operator with the real (his conscious state). Virtual reality has the potential to create a false conviction of an imaginary reality (because its nature is symbolic) in which other laws rule under the principle of the ludic. The virtual world is the complete opposite of the real world. Its structure is the same as the videogame because it appeals to delayed choice. Under this principle the operator can complete the virtual activity by accumulating errors and fixing them. This means that a poor decision can be reversed. This is the basis on which all video games operate.

The other component is the subjectivity of the virtual operator. This is where the change really comes in. Virtual reality immerses the operator and makes him part of the virtual content, but from his subjective position. All other media technologies create external content, so their interaction with humans can be viewed from an external (third person) position; they are based on the referential frame of image to establish the boundary between the fantastic and the real. By removing this boundary, virtuality intensifies the interaction to make it as close to the real as possible. As more inputs are incorporated, such as the sensation of feeling through the skin or the adaptation of a device that simulates smell, the immersion will be more complex because the operator will mistake the simulated as real. So far it is known that this effect is personal, it varies in each case.

So there are two problematic components that arise from the complex nature of this technology. First, the understanding of the real and the position of the human being in it (which involves addressing the question of subjectivity or conscious state).

In the contemporary world the understanding of the real is deeply marked by objectivity, force and measurement, which are categories inherited from Newtonian knowledge. Reality is nothing more than the conjunction of (separable) parts that are linked by a physical effect of force; they are observable and measurable phenomena. The human being, from this perspective, is separated from the real because the latter is a thing that has a form, can be measured and even its movement can be predicted. But in addition, the ontological status of the (non-human) parts is their inertia and lack of will; in contrast, the human being is assumed as an active being capable of knowledge and with the power to manipulate reality and transform it.

Another problem that emerges is when we understand the physical and non-physical nature of the human being under the same parameters. One of the problems that even science cannot solve, for example, is where consciousness comes from. If we apply the same principles of objectivity, separability and measurement, consciousness must have a material origin that can be observed and even replicated. However, the results have been frustrating and it is increasingly clear that this is a complex and emerging phenomena that needs other types of categories for its explanation. Science has simply covered up the issue by claiming that consciousness is epiphenomenal. Why is this problem important for understanding virtual reality? Because virtual simulation sometimes ends up confusing the veracity of the real in the mind of the operator. This is an extraordinary phenomena because it would be calling into question one of the fundamental components of the real: the universalist notion of the objective. If so, the problem is in the mind of the human being, in his subjectivity, but for that it is necessary to go beyond the limits of traditional science. Its categories are not going to take us anywhere. This is where quantum physics comes in. Its principles allow us to better understand the problem of consciousness and additionally give us elements to better understand the ontological status of the real beyond the traditional Newtonian principles (objectivity, separability and measurement). Therefore, it is necessary to address some fundamental principles of the quantum world: wave/particle relation, temporal nonlocality and spatial nonlocality.

The wave/particle relationship alludes to the changing nature of light. Sometimes it behaves as a particle and other times as a wave, all depending on the action of measuring its properties. This discovery raised fundamental questions about the nature of the real and the role of the observer in it. It also opened the discussion about consciousness as a fundamental property of the real and that it would be universal (present in living and non-living organisms). Before going into detail on these philosophical questions, let us first briefly describe the three experiments that unveiled the radical nature of photons.

The double slit experiment

This experiment consisted in sending a stream of light (or photon stream) from a source against a screen with two open slits in front of it. In the first part the light beam is fired, but with one of the slits closed, obtaining on the screen a concentration of light hits drawn as a vertical line of concentrated photons (in other words, a vertical beam of light). What these results demonstrated was that light behaved as a particle (Yaguana 2021).

With the two slits open, two separate concentrations of light were supposed to be drawn as particles, however, what was obtained was an interference pattern reflection on the photographic plane, characteristic of waves visually drawn as a series of ascending and descending wavelike ridges (2021).

Finally, detectors were installed in the experiment behind the slits, in order to know what was happening with the photons, if they could indeed split and pass simultaneously through both slits. However, the new configuration (with open slits and activated detectors) obtained the opposite result: the photons behaved like particles. The wave interference pattern, also known as wave function collapse, was thus destroyed (2021).

The first thing that became clear is the incidence of the observer in the result of the experiment, which leads us to consider the notion of universal objectivity. Neither the subject is isolated from the object nor the object can be considered a thing with independent properties. If the one influences the other, it means that there is a connection between both or both are part of a more complex reality. This is called contextualism and refers to the influence that has the general context (in which the experimenter’s own expectations are immersed) on the experimental result. In other words, context helps reality to realize itself (Zohar 1994).

Contextualism destroys pure objectivity because it suggests that the action of measuring reality determines its nature. Werner Heisenberg, postulated the uncertainty principle (Zohar and Marshall 1998, 183) which indicates that in quantum physics observation is not possible without fundamentally altering the observed object.

The collapse of the wave function (also called superposition state) also tells us that the reality we see and feel is only a reflection of many possibilities of the real that coexist as possibilities on an abstract plane. This is somewhat difficult to understand, but basically the collapse would reflect the indeterminate state of reality before it is measured or observed. When measurement occurs, the indeterminate transitions to the certain. Neils Bohr called it the principle of complementarity (Van Lommel 2010).

The superposition, in fact, what it reveals is that reality does not exist until we measure it. Before that it is a field of possibilities that collapses when we exert influence (observation) on it. Reality thus has two natures. One that is uncertain, but in which many possibilities coexist, and the other that is specific, observable and attainable to our senses. Measurement is a bridge that connects both, what Bohr called the principle of complementarity and is important for our world. What we see in the external world is possible because of this principle in which the potential reality transits to a specific one (Yaguana 2021).

The Bell Experiments

The double-slit experiments called into question some of the basic foundations of modern scientific knowledge of Newtonian origin. It put into question the very ontology of the real. The ontological subject-object separation collapsed after centuries of being cultivated and sustained.

Albert Einstein categorically refused to accept the principles derived from subatomic particle physics. His denial was based on the idea that reality was deterministic, i.e., that reality is independent of the observer. With a group of his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, they presented the paper “EPR” (Zohar and Marshall 1998), to recover the determinism and objectivity of reality. Their conviction was based on the principle of separability by which the subject could not affect the object of study, thus respecting the principles of objectivity, locality and continuity. These were understood to be inviolable. This set of properties was called local realism (Wendt 2015).

To challenge local realism the Irish physicist John Bell suggested the inequality theorem by which the locality principle was tested. In Einstein’s postulate only nearby objects can influence each other, that is why some of their properties can be calculated in advance. Bell discovered that long-distance entanglement between particles can be established.

The main experiments designed from Bell’s proposal have only shown that entanglement exists no matter the distance. The act of measuring a photon influences the properties of its pair, even if they are hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart. It was thus demonstrated that reality is fundamentally non-local, i.e. instantaneous correlations can occur between events that are widely separated in space (Yaguana 2021).

Einstein called this phenomenon “ghostly action at a distance” because a link between events occurs without any exchange of force or signal between them. This is the counterintuitive nature of quantum realism based on an unbroken network of overlapping or correlated internal relationships. There are no parts that are separate from each other nor do they need a physical or causal force to link them. Everything is strangely united in a kind of holistic reality that we do not yet understand (Zohar 1994).

The Delayed Choice Experiment

If the Bell experiments showed the existence of spatial nonlocality, Wheeler’s experiments would extend the finding to the level of temporality, i.e. that correlations could occur between events separated in time. For a better understanding one must refer to physicist John Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment (Wendt 2015). Its formulation is complex, but in brief terms it can be said to be a modification of the double-slit experiment (Yaguana 2021). Recall that this was based on two parts. First (2021), a beam of light was passed through a panel with a double slit to see how the photons were reflected on a photographic screen, in order to determine whether it was a wave or a particle. Recall that in this instance no measurement is made and the light behaves as a particle, when passing through one slit, and as a wave, when passing through both. In the second part (2021) a detector is installed on the first plate to find out if the photons were passing through both slits, but in doing so the wave function collapses and the photons behave as particles, reflecting two beams of light on the photographic panel.

In Wheeler’s experiment, the measurement is made before the photons reach the double slit, i.e., the detector is placed in front of it, and is activated only when the photons have passed through it (2021). In simpler terms, the measuring equipment is off when the photons pass through it, but turns on after they pass through the double slit (2021). It was an ingenious experiment and sought to unveil the true nature of photons. The result observed on the photographic panel was the collapse of the wave function (2021). The photons behaved like particles even though the measurement was late.

In conclusion, because the measurement was taken while the photon was in flight (after passing through the double slit, but before reaching the photographic panel) its definition (as a wave or particle) was delayed (2021). It was shown that the photon was able to warn itself in the future that it is going to be measured in order to cross the test detector as a particle and not as a wave (2021). This would be a wave function collapse with retroactive effect because a type of communication or link between the future of the particle and its past (2021) is evidenced.

The principle of temporal continuity, as the linear succession of “nows”, was deeply questioned because the experiment was demonstrating that there can be discontinuous temporality links, a phenomenon that was theoretically called temporal nonlocality (2021).

So far, some interesting conclusions can be made. The principle of temporal and spatial locality is not universal. Objectivity does not exist, action at a distance is possible and finally matter seems to have a kind of primitive mentality. These properties drastically change the understanding of reality. Phenomena that were previously partially explained now have a new air in their interpretation: it is known, for example, that the neural states of the brain are not limited to purely materialistic explanations, e.g., the brain would operate with quantum laws that would help to understand consciousness as an emergent phenomenon; by derivation human behavior cannot be anticipated by classical probabilistic laws because its behavior would be highly influenced by the same quantum principles of subatomic particles, i.e. uncertainty and relational holism; the same complex network of quantum realism extends to animals and plants since it has been verified that they use communication systems based on principles of quantum entanglement.

If there are quantum effects in different instances of life, that not only means that materialism was wrong in the method of study, alluding that everything is classical physics, but that the very conception of life is in question. But this essay will not go that deep. The object of study is the human being and his relationship with interactive technologies, specifically virtual reality, so the first thing to delimit is what we are going to study of human nature using the radical categories that quantum physics has left us.

Is it possible to find quantum effects in behavior, in the nature of the human being? Understanding this problem implies analyzing and going deeper into radical aspects of the human subject. To understand it from a quantum matrix not only implies going into another theory, but also ontologically changing profound postulates of reality. One of these challenges consists in understanding the nature of consciousness. Even with all the current scientific progress, it has not been possible to give a satisfactory and universal answer to its origin. This tells us a lot about the limitations of materialistic science. The alternative lies in what quantum knowledge can offer us, and indeed the result is that we have a more coherent explanation.

Danah Zohar (1998), for example, appeals to the quantum principle of relational holism to explain consciousness as an emergent event. According to her proposal, the neurons of the brain operate separately and in association. This distinction is important because in their unification neurons acquire a more complex nature that allows them to perform tasks that they cannot normally do separately. This condition of unification would be crossed by a quantum principle of relational holism that not only unifies the work of neurons, but also allows them to acquire a common identity. According to Zohar (1998) the Bose-Einstein condensate is the basis of this process. Unification makes it possible to create the physical conditions for consciousness to emerge, but experience is necessary for the process to be completed.

If the brain operates on quantum principles, must human behavior be influenced by them? What evidence is there for this? Experimental trials have shown that human decisions elude many of the assumptions of cognitive science such as the principle of utility maximization and order (Wendt 2015). Instead, more influential are properties of the quantum world such as uncertainty rather than certainty, relational holism that includes context (for its active part) in decision making, the unconscious and emotions. All of these determine human behavior. Quantum decision theory has demonstrated that and has suggested the concept of super-rationality to address it (Busemeyer & Bruza 2012).

One of the fundamental questions of this problem lies in understanding how the transition takes place between the mental construction of reality and its action in the world as experience.

In order to better understand this process, it is important to follow up the thought of Danah Zohar (1998). After providing a scientific basis for consciousness through the process of unification in the Bose-Einstein condensate, the author goes on to explain the phenomenon, recognizing that consciousness thus established operates as a wave function. But when it materializes in the world it replicates the state of the particle. Consciousness, in other words, would reflect the same wave/particle relationship observed in experimental tests of light. Recall the double slit, delayed choice, and Bell experiments. They all established two types of reality. Thus, the wave function unveiled an uncertain, indeterminate reality in a natural state of superposition. Furthermore, it was discovered that particles can be entangled without the space/time impositions that rules our world. All this to understand that at the quantum level reality is inverse to the laws that rule in the classical world. The reality of the particle, on the other hand, is the one we observe every day. Its state is definite, with a clearly established time in continuity or tracking of “nows”, and where, in addition, the distances are clearly separated, and none can exceed the limits established by the laws of classical physics.

This distinction of realities is applicable, according to Zohar (1998), to the mind/body relationship of the human being.  The mind would replicate what is the wave function while the body would be the account of the particle. With this valid comparison the author emphasizes that the same principles that rule nature are reproduced in the human being, therefore, there is nothing to separate, the human being is an extension of the wave/particle reality, it is adhered to its existence, hence, to continue persisting in separating the mind from the body is a useless and unnatural task.

If, as Zohar (1998) says, the wave is the mind and the particle is the body, then it is necessary to discern how thought is transformed into action and to see what role the will or intention plays in the process.

A materialistic interpretation would say that there is not much to explain because reasons are causes (1), i.e. what moves our body is what originates in the brain as a causal chain. Therefore, there is nothing mysterious to unravel.

However, the problem is not so simple. Alex Wendt (2015) attributes to the will a predominant role in the mind/body transition. The will, indeed, is the force that allows the chaining of the mind with actions in the world, but not for that fact its influence can be reduced to a materialistic explanation, i.e. we are not talking about mental causation, it is of another, more complex type.

It is necessary to distinguish what type of causality is involved in the process.

Following Aristotelian thought we find two types: efficient and final causality (Zohar & Marshall 1998). The former refers to a local transmission of energy from X that propagates forward in time to Y, as a result of which the properties and behavior of the latter changes. Thus established Y does not perform any participatory role until it receives energy from X. The relationship is temporally continuous because it follows the logical chaining that we observe in the everyday world, from the present that travels a path forward into the future. In describing our relationship to reality in the world we perceive, this type of causality became universalized to explain all types of problems from those promulgated in science to those that are part of everyday life. It became the classic view of understanding the world and is how cause is conceptually thought of.

However, this is not the only type of causation in Aristotelian thought. There is also final causation which is more difficult to understand, but it provides a basis for understanding what is going on in the subatomic world. And it will be the basis for explaining the will. Also called teleological, this type of causality refers to how the ultimate ends or purposes of a system, i.e. its future, relates to its behavior in the present.

Returning to the previous example, it means that Y has a participatory role in the relation with X even if the latter has not previously displaced its energy that allows the motion. Another clear example comes from the delayed choice experiment where photons “know” that they are going to be measured in the future which allows them to collapse. Both examples indicate that the future is linked to the present in an inverse, backward relationship, which is why Aristotelian thought considered this type of causality to be temporally explained in that direction.

Both types of causality are not only distinguished by the type of relationship they establish between the parts, but they also invite us to conceptually rethink the direction of time we perceive. Does reality operate with a continuous direction of time as indicated by our senses? If particle physics, which studies the essential components of reality, has shown that it does not, then something is wrong.

If it is true that time is continuous in the external world, that is what our senses perceive, this does not apply to the quantum world. For Alex Wendt (2015) it is in the collapse of the wave function that time takes a specific form, it is created from this event. The present is created by its distinction with the past and the future and the continuous linking arises for our senses to give order to reality. But that leads us to raise a question, how to understand time before the collapse?

Important here is the approach of Cramer (1998) who uses the findings of the delayed choice experiment to argue that before collapse there is a non-temporal entanglement of particles. For example, the future can go in the opposite direction backwards, towards the past or the present as conceived by the Aristotelian thinking of final causes. In our classical world such a thing is incoherent because we perceive the opposite.

Let us recall some details of the late choice experiment. In the test the observer measures the properties of light, but after it passes through the first plate with slits where the detectors of the experiment are installed. Only after this event is accomplished and before the light reaches the photographic plate the observer turns on the light detectors. If the experiment was confusing, the result was even more confusing because the light continued to show particle patterns on the final panel.

Cramer (1998) takes these findings to formulate that in the quantum world a non-temporal entanglement prevails, therefore, it would not be unusual to find influences from the future in the present. And indeed, that is what was found. First, when the observer is involved, he is defining the state of light as continuous temporal entanglement, although the measurement was delayed. This direction of events Cramer (1998) calls a delayed wave because it proceeds in the normal direction that we perceive the classical world, forward, from the present to the future. In simpler terms, the experiment allowed the particles to leave their coherent state into a decoherent state where the laws of classical physics apply and where time is perceived continuously. Second, when light is printed on the plate as a particle it is violating the principles of time continuity because it advances its choice. Even though the measurement was delayed, the result was the same as that of the double slit. The wave function collapsed and behaved as a particle. This state Cramer (1998) identified as advanced wave because it proceeds backwards. The future of the particle (its collapse) was related to its past (delayed measurement of the observer). In other words, the particle could warn itself in the future that it is going to be measured because its coherent state was not broken, something like this is only possible because in the quantum world there is no distinction of present, past and future. There are no spatial or temporal limits to entanglement. What is remarkable is that the observer’s intervention was integrated into the result of the experiment, which would reinforce the idea of a link between the coherent world (i.e. our reality) and decoherent (the quantum world).

For Cramer (1998) this relationship exists because the observer by measuring the property of light is not only forcing to define its state, and thus creating the continuous temporal reality that allows to record the event, but is allowing the future to intervene as a link for the photons to acquire particle properties. The result is the production of the present where the wave function collapses.  Thus established, it can be concluded that the present is literally created from influences from both the past and the future (2).    

With this background it is suggested that the will has quantum properties. Its origin is deeply linked to the mental part of the human being, so it cannot be traced as an observable or measurable object in any part of the brain. To do so would imply taking the materialistic approach to consciousness to the extreme. And that is not the case. So far, science has not found evidence that allows us to affirm that the will rests in a certain type of neurons. And although neuroscience has come a long way, discerning the question of will requires rather a quantum approach, and from that perspective the conclusion is quite clear. Being a quantum phenomenon, the will not only concerns the energy that moves the body, it also problematizes the directionality of time. This entails dismantling the efficient causal understanding of reality that has dominated human thought. By approaching time as totality final causes make sense. Here it is necessary to return to Wendt (2015) because he explains that the quantum effects of the will have two clear manifestations in the human case:

1. Through the will, decisions are made, which means leaving indeterminacy to a defined state, or in quantum terms, collapsing the wave function and entering a state of decoherence where the laws of classical physics apply. Thus, the will is a bridge that links the human interior in a state of superposition (the mental side of consciousness) with the external classical world (where the body interacts). It is important to observe that in this definition the quantum state of superposition is recognized as chaos from which the will emerges to bring order, separating reality into two: one where superposition rules and the other where causal determinism operates. The latter is the one we perceive with our senses and we reach it through experience. Therefore, the will and experience are linked in a single process, allowing the construction of meanings that are retained in the memory, thus making life a recognizable and experiential event. 
2. By way of the will, control is exerted on the direction of the body’s movement over time. With this argument Wendt (2015) tries to explain several things. First, reasons are causes, but not efficient causes, but final causes. That means approaching time from a quantum approach understanding that the future has an impact on the past, something that is counterintuitive because in the classical world we perceive the opposite. But if the will has quantum properties, then the chaining of time cannot be past-present-future. Instead, Wendt (2015) posits that the will allows the human mind to project itself long-distance from the future to the present like Cramer’s (1998) advanced action, for that it takes advantage of temporal nonlocality. It deliberately follows that direction creating a state of destiny. But beware, its realization will be deeply linked to the past, or in quantum terms to its delayed action. When Cramer (1998) states that the present arises from the correlation of the future and the past, he is referring to this condition. As the future, the will allows the projection of many states of destiny because they lie in a state of superposition, decisions collapse indeterminacy, but that does not mean that they are completed, they can be concretized in an inconclusive manner. They remain as experiences registered in memory. Experiences accumulate in such a way that they are stored and return to a state of superposition where they are related to each other, a process that is important because it allows the creation of meaning.

That is why the role of the will is important because it is the origin of actions based on an unfinished state of relations between an idealized future and the incomplete past, or in quantum terms between the advanced action and the delayed action of its unconscious.  According to Wendt (2015) the superposition state of accumulated experiences is permanently redefining the conscious intention to reach an end, that is why people are permanently establishing correlations with their past behavior. The harmony of the end or purpose with a concluded past is called coherence and is the measure by which we know that final causes operate in human beings because their future holds an underlying intention that gives meaning to and completes their past. According to Wendt (2015) this projection is not necessarily conscious. We are permanently making decisions that collapse indeterminacy and experience allows us to reach it in a world where causal determination rules. In that condition what we experience is delayed action, i.e. the continuous movement of time from backwards to forwards. We literally cannot perceive the future with our eyes. However, in the unconscious, where quantum principles govern, experience accumulates, correlates with itself and with the alternative futures that the will helps to project. In the unconscious, reality exists as potentiality. The will has an impact on breaking the superposition by becoming conscious of the collapse of the wave function through the decision motivated by an explicit intention to reach a desired future. This means that the mental state of the human being is made according to principles of non-locality that open the possibility of returning to the past and reconstructing it. 

In the end we can make an interesting conclusion by interspersing both the quantum approach of the will with that of rationality. The will not only breaks down the causal determinism that dominates classical human thought of understanding reality as an inseparable cause-effect relationship, but also allows us to include final causes in the understanding of behavior, something that was previously unthinkable because invoking this condition inevitably led to interpretations of a metaphysical order. With quantum physics, the field of intentionality not only becomes valid as an academic discussion, but also calls into question the existence of a single reality. In fact, what the research affirms is that there are two orders of reality that are permanently interacting. The quantum world of superposition and the deterministic reality that we perceive. There is enough scientific evidence that there is a natural link between the two. The presence of quantum effects in macroscopic instances (in animals for example or in plants) is undeniable. Human instances are also a place where quantum effects prevail. In fact, what has been proposed so far is that the human being has a conscious formation thanks to the quantum structure that prevails in the brain, but not only that, the individual can feel these effects in the experience of reality.

This being so, the problem of reality becomes more complicated: how to harmonize both domains for a harmonious coexistence? If the causal determinism that we perceive with our senses in the external world is the result of an ordering process of the quantum state of superposition, then why are there still quantum coherence effects in the classical world? In the human case it could be formulated in this way: why is rationality and order not predominant in human decision making, and instead uncertainty, emotions and the unconscious that are natural manifestations of the quantum world reign? Why is there permanently such a process of rupture?

For Wendt (2015) the role of the will here is key. It contributes to create order out of chaos or in quantum terms it allows to collapse the wave function when observed from the inside, but it is also incongruent with causal determinism because from the subjective perspective the will builds an intentional determination, but in the final causal sense. That means that the ontological nature of the will eludes the causal determination of local realism because it is permanently creating a state of order-breaking or order-perforating. It seems contradictory, but the argument is strengthened mainly because the existence of states of quantum coherence in macroscopic instances is evident. Recognized as an uncontrollable force, Wendt (2015) concludes that the best way to understand the power of the will lies in the uncertainty of human behavior, hence, it is impossible to predict it even when conditioning factors such as discipline, coercion or stimuli intervene. Thus established, the will can be interpreted from a more creative approach as a spontaneous vital force that in the human case permanently eludes causal determination. 

In this way we have a different framework of the human being. Wendt (2015) proposes to understand it as a walking wave function with direct experience of advanced action thanks to the quantum properties of the will. Both matter, which from a panpsychist approach is approached as an agent, and the human being, coincide in having that spontaneous vital force that is permanently eluding the impositions of causal determinism, that is why both are naturally free.

How can we understand virtual reality from this approach of quantum interactionism? 

The fear that some thinkers have is that reality will be devalued by the irruption of a new immersive technology that transforms the subjective experience of the real. Local realism, which is a concept of classical physics, is a bubble that we cannot easily get out of. We are limited by its principles and laws, we are born perceiving with our senses its effects and throughout life we take for granted that this is reality, limited by a local temporality that is also spatial, with objects separated and dispersed from our perception that are also moved by causal forces. That is what the senses tell us and our interpretation of what is real is based on those properties.

When the father of causal determinism, Albert Einstein, became aware that this reality is only a mantle of another more complex reality that operates with non-deterministic and non-causal principles, he went into shock and dedicated a good part of his time to discredit the findings of the new physics. But he failed. Now we know not only the existence of a hidden reality where the principles of local realism are inverted, but also that they have a clear extension in the macroscopic world that we perceive with our senses.

When critical thinkers (coming from philosophy, communication theory, sociology or social psychology) are alarmed by the irruption of a new technologically mediated reality, they are reproducing the same consternation of Einstein. They find it difficult to conceive that the principles governing human coexistence of local realism are not universal and have a direct effect on subjective experience.  Their concern is not only limited to media change as a technology that brings with it the end of mass media, but to the kind of effects that can lead to a less physical and more symbolic society. Of course, behind these concerns is a certain type of conceptualization of communication that has entered into crisis because face-to-face dialogic links are transforming and everything that goes with it.

What this essay proposes is the following: virtual reality technology replicates the same patterns of quantum realism, but its effects become recognizable to the subjective experience from observation and sensory perception without implying decoherence. The will, which is the transforming force of reality, is externalized. As a result, the unconscious is reflected as the wave function in the experiment of the double slit, which does not collapse when we look at it. Consequently, the effects on the individual’s own experience and personality can be powerful because they allude to the materialization of the hidden nature of reality. To better understand this process, it is necessary to have a basic conceptual framework of virtual reality and to analyze its properties in order to find as a whole the technology that allows us to experience the effects of quantum realism.

Now the question that arises is how the contemporary identity of the human being adjusts to a technological environment of virtual reality. If it was stated previously that a fundamental property of this technology lies in internalizing the subjective experience in a simulated environment, this means that its effects are not only representational, that is, they are not only limited to the mind of the individual, but have an extension in the corporeality, which complicates the experience to a contradictory but real state. If virtual reality makes real quantum effects in the experience of the body, transgressing the nature of causal determinism, how is its representation transformed in the individual? How is the role of corporeality transformed in a virtual experience? How far can its effects go? How is the notion of time-space transformed? Is it possible for a technological otherness to emerge in the immersive subjective experience of virtual reality?

All these concerns allude to the fundamental aspects of identity independently of historical time because they indicate to us as a whole how the individual constructs reality and experiences it. To understand these changes in depth, it is necessary to address the experience of the modern human being in virtual reality environments in different categories: temporal, spatial, relationship with others and corporeality.

The virtual experience in time-space

If there are two properties of local realism that an immersive virtual reality system disrupts at first glance, it is the objective notion of time-space. Our natural perception tells us that reality is deterministic, meaning that everything around us has an exact location and temporality. This means that an object cannot be in two places at the same time, nor can it move without being influenced by an external force. The same applies to the temporal relationship. Our senses tell us that the external world advances in a continuous path from the present to the future leaving behind the past as an event recorded in unalterable memory from bodily experience. These are the foundations of local realism and it is what Einstein defended in the famous EPR paper to respond to the findings of the quantum world that questioned the universality of the principles of determinism.

Now we seem to repeat the same ontological dispute, but with technology in the middle of the discussion instead of subatomic particles, and Einstein’s role seems to have been inherited, contradictorily, by a wave of critical thinkers alarmed by the advance of technology in societies. Indeed, virtual reality problematizes the directionality of time and the local natural property of matter. Let us begin with the former.

Being an illusory representation of the external world, virtual reality does not necessarily replicate the determinism of reality, even if it could do so it would not make sense, because no one would be interested in experiencing an illusion that has the same limitations of local realism. So the greatest potential of virtual reality is in breaking these laws. That means that time, for example, will have different modes of experimentation from the continuous one of the external world to the teleological one of the unconscious. There may even be transgressions such as time dilation which is the slow perception of time as if it were running in slow motion. In itself, there are many modalities that are unnatural to our everyday experience, but they become real in the simulation by telepresence from the subjective position of the self. That is the difference that marks the virtual reality with other technologies, by internalizing the experience what Smed Nielsen (2012) called objectification of the representational dimension is produced.

In the virtual experience the operator can establish direct links between the future and the past, return to the past or go to the future to alter the present. Thus the operator’s decisions occur with a delayed effect because they are subject to the temporal correlation of his actions. The innovation is that none of these links occur in the third person as in the video game, but in the direct plane of subjectivity. Hence, their effects may alter the operator’s internally standardized notion of temporality. Smed Nielsen (2012) called this change distortion of the regular hierarchical perception and alludes to the semantic change of deterministic laws in the subjectivity of the affected person. What the research proposes is to approach it from the category of teleological effect in virtual environments to understand how the subjective experience assimilates the violation of the continuous chaining of past-present-future.

If time loses its continuous nature in virtual environments, space ceases to have a specific locality. Thus, not only is it possible to experience teleportation from distant places in the first person, but reality, as an object external to the senses, acquires an active and uncertain property. In other words, the context becomes more relevant because it can interact directly with the operator. In the subjective virtual experience we can see how nature, animals, machines, in general terms what is not human, have an agenda of their own and use human language to communicate. Anyone would say that it is only fantasy, but the internalization of the experience gives a special additive to this activity. Within the framework of the senses there is a distortion of the regular hierarchical perception because it is indicating to the operator that the construction of the real is not an objective process, but a participatory exercise where the parts of the environment are activated, performing autonomous actions and in their interaction they create senses that serve to achieve the purposes. It also breaks the causal chain by which the objects of the external world move under the influence of an external force. If virtual reality constructs a participatory sense of reality in the subjective experience, this means that any part of the environment can act by its own force without any other external influence. This can lead to what Smed Nielsen (2012) typified as perceptual impact or shock because it breaks the ontology of causal determinism in the subjective experience. In addition, they can lead the operator to break the objective link with reality.

Virtual experience through the body

Dana Zohar (1998) made a relational explanation of the mind and body to understand how we insert ourselves into reality. She proposes that there are two ways of perceiving reality, from the mind and the body. From each we perceive reality in opposition. The mind allows us to project ourselves with final causes, for example, but the body is limited to continuous time and local space. However, as Zohar (1998) suggests, it is not possible to separate experience or give an exclusive role to either the body or the mind.  It is through their correlation that the subjective experience of the self is constructed. It is inconsistent to continue to approach them separately. The clearest example is the materialistic approach to the study of consciousness, attributing to it objective, visible, measurable properties. Consciousness is an object that can be manipulated, so that it can be transferred to an electronic circuit that allows humanity to achieve immortality.

This relationship is not accidental. Deep reality operates in the same way as the double slit experiment demonstrated. There is a complex, intertwined reality whose nature is superposition and where there is no locality or temporality. That is the wave pattern of reality and the mind reflects that same model. The deterministic reality that we see and perceive from birth is the result of the particular pattern of reality, of its specificity, temporality and locality. This is the plane of reality that we access through the body. Thus Zohar (1998) concludes that the mind is the reflection of the wave and our body that of the particle. On that basis, Alexander Wendt’s (2015) proposal was reinforced, which recognizes human nature as a walking wave function.

Why take up this discussion in this part?  Because virtual reality is a simulation of the real, but without the limitations that separate the wave pattern from the particular pattern. This means that the body will not be limited to local realism and can directly access the effects of quantum realism from subjective experience. The wave pattern consequently becomes real in our eyes and in the interaction we can experience its effects. What the body experiences in this construction is unusual because it is mental reality that materializes, i.e. the quantum effects of superposition, entanglement and temporal nonlocality can be experienced in the body.

Studies such as those of Smed Nielsen (2012) understand that the body is as important as the mind not only because it helps to sense the world but because it enables the construction of the senses of the world. This is a knowledge inherited from the philosophical tradition of Merleau Ponti. Smed Nielsen (2012) uses the concept of soma to describe the body as action and sense in the playful interaction of the video game. What these studies tell us is that technologically mediated experience is as important as natural experience with the outside world.

Therefore, it is necessary to begin by recognizing that mediated experiences are no less significant than those lived in the outside world. Their importance lies not only in what they can generate in the mind, but also in the role that the body plays in transforming the senses in a dynamic relationship of permanent feedback. Here it is important to point out that the mind-body duality is not weakened in mediated experiences. The body does not cease to feel and the mind does not cease to generate meanings. What changes are the conditions that determine what is real. If we previously move towards a recognition that virtual reality externalizes the quantum effects of reality, then we return to the conclusion that the body does not only live a simulation, but that a breaking of the link with the real (breaking the determinism of the causal laws of local realism) can occur when the wave pattern of reality is unveiled. Therefore, the body as soma is not only able to experience the simulated reality, but it can also incorporate its senses to affect its link with local realism. Therein lies the potential of virtual reality. Research in this regard has addressed this phenomenon by recognizing the potential of this technology to cure certain types of diseases or traumas associated with the mind.

It will be important here to approach this problem from the relationship between the rational (as the nature of local realism) and the irrational (as the manifestation of quantum realism) in immersive virtual environments.

What is interesting is to observe that in virtual environments the rational and the irrational are weaving contradictory relationships in the construction of the sense of the real. To begin with, the body interacts in simulated action. Seen from the outside, something like this makes no sense. It is as if the body were interacting with nothingness, it is the equivalent of externalizing a state of somnambulism without being asleep. This state of phantasmagoric interaction is familiar to us because it emulates the action of sleep, but without breaking the conscious state of the individual. The simulation of the real in immersive virtual environments is the action that allows us to represent the natural environment of the unconscious without breaking the conscious state of the individual. Technically speaking it is the objectification of the nature of the unconscious. To clarify, it is not the unconscious that emerges, but the conditions in which it interacts, its contextual nature. But that does not prevent it from emerging. In the interaction the unconscious of the individual can be unveiled, but not directly. When the operator puts on the virtual immersion glasses he is fully conscious, what dominates his actions is his consciousness in its natural state, it is his rationality that interacts with the virtual environment. But it is susceptible to being deceived when it comes into contact with the non-causal and non-deterministic nature of the virtual. What happens when the unconscious of the individual emerges in a virtual activity?

The objectified unconscious has the power that drugs lack and can help treat mind-associated illnesses with a clear somatic manifestation. This is a complex and long-term process that is well known to psychiatry and psychology. The action of the unconscious in virtual environments has not only mental but also somatic sequelae. This process is called transcendence and to avoid speculation we briefly collect some research that has demonstrated its effectiveness.

In 2014 Mexican researcher Max Ortiz Catalán from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, successfully developed a treatment based on virtual reality to help patients with phantom limb syndrome. This is a disease of mental origin because patients suffer pain in their amputated limbs, although they no longer have them. In context, Ortiz explains, this disease is quite common: “Seventy percent of amputees experience pain in the amputated limb even though it no longer exists, and this sensation can become a chronic condition that reduces the quality of life of these people. However, the exact cause of phantom limb syndrome is still unknown” (Trends 21 2014).

Based on IBE we could argue that the origin of this disease lies in the inseparable relationship between mind and body. The body feels pain from a limb it no longer has because it is deeply integrated in the mind of the sufferer. And in the mind we know that the rational and the irrational interact. On the rational plane, logic indicates objectively that there is no more arm, but the unconscious does not handle the same sense. On the subjective plane something like this is unacceptable or simply ignored, but for the unconscious the arm is still there. Pain is the origin of this dispute. The intervention of virtual reality in this case helps us to confirm this postulate.

Ortiz (Tendencias 21 2014) invented a system that made it possible to simulate the amputated part of the patient’s body in a virtual environment by connecting sensors in the patient’s body and head so that it can replicate the movement of the amputated arm, but virtually represented on a screen.

The results are explained by Ortiz himself (Tendencias 21 2014) and confirm that virtual reality can generate an effect of somatic transcendence through the influence of the objectified unconscious. “The motor areas of the brain necessary for the movement of the amputated arm are reactivated, and the patient obtains a visual response that tricks the brain into believing that there is an arm executing such motor commands. He sees himself as a whole, with his amputated arm back in place,” he adds (Tendencias 21 2014).

This transition is not objective because we as observers simply cannot see. But that does not mean that the phenomenon occurs, in fact, it happens, but within the framework of the operator’s subjectivity. In this case, not only does a perceptual shock occurs, but the operator’s subjective conviction influences a certain part of his brain to reactivate and resolve the pain involved in having an amputated limb, something that traditional medication did not achieve. It is not only the effect of the illusion, but the desire (as the uncontrollable force of will) that the operator has to see his limb replaced that influences the success of the treatment. Thus, somatic transcendence is not only a phenomenon based on the technique of creating a simulated reality, but the will (which is subjective) plays a determining role so that the perceptual shock leads to the conviction that the virtual illusion becomes real, triggering an observable and measurable physiological process.

Otherness in virtual environments

If the simulation of the real becomes “real” for the human mind, what about the interaction of the human operator with the virtual agents or characters that are part of the ludic activity?

The journal PLOS ONE published an interesting article summarizing a research developed at Stanford University.  Researchers at this academic center created a virtual reality application called “Becoming Homeless”. Using virtual immersion glasses, an interactive simulated space was created where a group of people (the human operators) saw from their subjective plane how the material conditions of their lives were degraded to the point of poverty, exclusion and begging. The objective of the activity was to determine the impact of the simulated experience on the participants’ feeling of empathy (Tendencies 21 2018).

The experiment involved 560 volunteers divided into two groups, ranging in age from 15 to 88 years old. Two different studies were conducted, each lasting two months. One was aimed at emulating the experience in an immersive virtual environment and the other on a computer as a traditional video game activity.

The findings were interesting (Trends 21 2018). The group of volunteers who experienced the simulation in a virtual reality environment claimed to have a greater sensitivity to the marginalized. But the most interesting part came next. The researchers did a post-study follow-up of the volunteers who participated in the virtual experience and found that 82% had signed a petition in favor of offering affordable housing to the homeless. To counter the data, the researchers did the same follow-up with the group that experienced the activity as a video game and found that 67% of the volunteers had turned to the same petition. They also found that some of the virtual participants changed their daily living habits by forming bonds of solidarity with homeless people in their immediate environment.

One of the researchers, Jeremy Bailenson, concludes: “The most important thing about this research is that it gives us longitudinal evidence that virtual reality changes people’s attitudes and behaviors in a positive way”. He adds, “experiences are what define us as human beings, so it’s not surprising that an intense experience in virtual reality is more impactful than imagining something” (Tendencias 21 2018).

Jamil Zaki, another of the researchers questions the nature of empathy as a property attached to the personality that you are either born with or not. “Many studies have shown that empathy is not just a trait. It’s something you can work on and ramp up or down in different situations” (Tendencias 21 2018). And virtual reality can help make it part of our everyday attitudes.

What this virtual experience is telling us is that the effect of somatic transcendence addressed in the case of the phantom limb may be predominantly mental, i.e. the after-effects may have a greater impact on identity, on the subjective construction of reality. Let us clarify. In the case of the patient who had his arm amputated, virtual reality was used to balance his somatic nature because there was an unbalance between the objective condition of the body (the patient had no arm) and his subjective expectation (the mind conceived of the body as a totality, hence did not recognize that the arm was no longer attached to its structure). In the virtual experience of marginality the operators had no pathology, but their knowledge (in terms of information and experience) about poverty and marginality was relatively limited despite their ages ranging from 15 to 88 years. Poverty, and its sequelae, were unfamiliar to these people from the level of their experience. They were probably familiar from what they saw on television or read in books or newspapers. But why that knowledge did not lead them to convincing action is something we cannot answer because it was not addressed in the research. What is clear is the power of virtual reality to distort regular hierarchical perception through perceptual shock. Thus, the sense of poverty changed for these people because they lived the experience as if they were really marginalized and beggars. Such a convincing effect is only possible when the technology has achieved a high level of fidelity so that the representation looks real. Consequently, a state of shock was created in the participants because they lived an unpleasant experience that they had not known before and that motivated them to affirmative and reparative poverty work, but in the local and temporal realism of their daily lives, and it was determined that this effect was long lasting.

We see here a clear case of transcendence, but focused on the mind of the operator with clear repercussions in the transformation of individual identity. Why the effect is mental is not explained in detail by the researchers, but the following is proposed. In the virtual experiment, the otherness plays a determining role in the change of meaning and the subsequent binding action of the operators, but not the human other, because the experience was simulated, but the technological other represented in virtuality and embodied in the subjective experience of the operators.

Technological otherness is a concept addressed by researchers such as Tilo Hartman, Smed Nielsen, Horton and Wohl who at the time affirmed the active role of technology in its interaction with humans proposing categories such as parasocial interaction and paracommunication to understand the problem (Yaguana 2016). But the virtual reality of our time offers more disconcerting results such as somatic transcendence. In the virtual experiment of marginality the interaction with the machine is subjective allowing the operators to incarnate the experience of being poor. In other words, the virtual enabled the conditions for the human operators to put themselves in the shoes of the marginalized poor, so that the experience can be transferred from the other to the subjective self, which entails living their sensitivity, allowing the knowledge of otherness to be externalized, but from the subjective experience of the self. It seems counter-intuitive, but normally the other is only accessible through what our senses hear and see. Figuratively we say that we have to put ourselves in other people’s shoes to understand their attitudes. Virtual reality materializes this fantasy, but it is important to note that we do not gain access to their mind, but to the subjective position of the other, to how they perceive external reality from their experience. To identify this process, the category of experiential transference in virtual environments is proposed, and its results can significantly alter our perception not only of reality but also of the others who are part of that reality. For example, this exercise would be useful for insensitive people who victimize others in different modalities of violence. The rapist, for example, may incarnate the experience of his raped victim. Or the aggressor of bullying can put himself in the skin of the assaulted.

The results indicate that the effectiveness of the experiential transference is positive, and as we indicated previously, by focusing on the mind, it leads to an alteration of our identity nature. Identity is an open, modifiable and particular realm because it alludes to the subjective experience of the real, but if virtual reality internalizes the simulated experience of the other in the subjective perspective of the self, the cumulative effect can alter our subjective knowledge of the real, as well as our experience with local realism. That means that the world we see in the immersive glasses is not so unreal or fantastical because it has real effects, but more importantly it makes clear to us the complexity and universality of communication.

Indeed, experiential transference is another of the many extra-ordinary properties of virtual reality that breaks down another of the foundations of local realism: the causal, objective and deterministic nature of human relationships. Everything we understood as communication in traditional terms is destroyed by the experiences mediated in virtual environments because they indicate that local, spatial and temporal restrictions on communication are not universal conditions. That is to say, it is not necessary for two people to be in the same place, at a specific time, in order to link their interests and affect their senses. Entanglement can occur over long distances or at different times. It is not universal either, the deterministic borders that define otherness. In the outside world the other is approached by our senses that see, hear and feel from an external position. It is literally impossible to see and feel what the other is experiencing because consciousness is neither transferable nor interchangeable. We only come to understand the other’s experience by their testimony or by what we see. But we also know that human communication is deceptive because intentions are not externalizable. Thus established, it is relative to affirm that the experience of the other is recognizable. But if virtual reality transgresses the law of intrasnferibility of the subjective experience of the other, this means that it is possible to put ourselves in their shoes to know what they experience. And the novelty is not to feel the experience of otherness, but the after-effects that derive from the activity. The experiment of virtual marginality demonstrated that its effects not only alter identity, but also actions in the real world. How is it possible for a timeless human communicational link to occur, without locality or experiential link with the other?

Something like this is only possible because in communication, as in reality, experiences are occurring all the time that contradict the principles of locality, continuous temporality and objectivity of local realism. It suggests that communication must be approached in universal terms including the incidence of quantum effects such as entanglement and relational holism. The disturbing thing is that this evidence comes from our relationship with technology, with virtual reality and the experiences derived from its use. Thus properties such as experiential transference have been discovered.

The complexity of communication in simulated (i.e. virtual) environments lies in the interaction of the human with the machine that has no consciousness, subjectivity, intentions, however autonomous it may be. Experimentation showed that the links happen either through somatic transcendence or experiential transference, explaining that both experiences do not follow causal, deterministic or objective patterns, but allude either to the unconscious objectified in the machine or to the otherness transferred in virtuality. Moreover, their effects not only altered identity in the long term but are manifested in the way we act in the real world. How to understand a communication that does not exist in terms of local realism, but has effects on everyday life?

We propose to approach the problem from the concept of counterfactual communication. As expected, the term does not come from the social sciences, but from quantum physics. This type of communication occurs between two objects separated in space, but which are linked to transmit and receive information without using wires or wireless connections of the electromagnetic spectrum of the earth.  Something like this is impossible because local realism says data transmission in our world occurs through causal forces that push information from A to B. In traditional communication terms it is the equivalent of saying that A sends information to B without a channel to transmit the data.

For easier explanation, counterfactual communication is the equivalent of quantum teleportation and is currently used to improve computer security systems in banks or governments. It is based on the quantum property of entanglement whereby instantaneously two particles are connected without the spatial limitation of our world. Experiential transference and somatic transcendence are based on quantum entanglement. To establish a link with the unconscious the phantom limb sufferer does not formally establish a communication. We never see the unconscious emerge and dialogue with the conscious. The links occur, but we do not see them, we only know that they occur because of their effects. In the case of marginality the same phenomenon also occurs. The virtual operators never interact with other humans in condition of poverty, but with their representations that are not authentic, but simulated, made by the machine, however, we see that the effects occur in a profound semantic change in the participants of the research and in their actions aimed at mitigating poverty in their environment, but clarifying that they never established a direct link with the human otherness of the poor.

Einstein was right in saying that this property of quantum entanglement was phantasmagorical, and he should be more distressed if he were still alive to see that the same effects of subatomic particles are applicable and recognizable in human behavior.

By way of conclusion it can be stated that identity is a process susceptible to alteration, in the mental construction of reality and its externalization in the action of the body, when interacting in immersive virtual reality environments. This is so because technology is an enabler of individual mental potential by exploiting the quantum effects of reality and making them sensitive to the body. This strange relationship of events creates a state of harmony of the soma, therefore, its effects not only alter the sense of the real, but also its experience.

NOTES:

1. This discussion is called mental causation and the materialistic predominance of its approach began with the physical sciences until it became positioned in the social sciences. Its explanation lies in understanding cause in the strict physical sense as the displacement of energy from A to B, which allows the movement of the latter.
2. Although the approach may raise suspicions about time travel, Cramer (1998) emphasizes that the process only involves enforcing correlations and therefore cannot be used to transmit information into the past.

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