A Formalized Model of Multiple Selves in MUD’s Cover Image

A Formalized Model of Multiple Selves in MUD’s
A Formalized Model of Multiple Selves in MUD’s

Author(s): Stefano Cavagnetto, Bruce Gahir
Subject(s): Sociology, Theory of Communication, ICT Information and Communications Technologies, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: MUD; multiple selves; personal identity; cyberspace;

Summary/Abstract: We will investigate the concept of the self (and its relation to personal identity in multiple cyber worlds). This investigation has its own justification, the fact that several questions concerning personal identity are answered by constructing examples of thought experiments involving fictional worlds. Thus it seems legitimate to us to discuss the problem in the framework of “concrete” alternative worlds which we call cyber worlds. The next section deals with a brief history of the problem of personal identity in modern philosophy and introduces the concept of the “self”. In section 2 we introduce conceptual frameworks that illustrate the idea of the self as composed of information in multiple cyber worlds and as a result pose some important questions to be investigated further, we finally conclude with section 3 and we consider how some concepts from anthropology may be applied to the study of the Cyberspace. Some authors tend to confuse, or overlap the concept of virtual communities or reality with the concept of Cyberspace because this is a rather vague concept. In this paper we consider virtual communities and virtual reality as just one portion of the Cyberspace. At the moment we are not going to try to answer fundamental ontological questions such as: what is Cyberspace? Is it or does it have a dimension? We assume that there exists a Cyberspace, a sort of electromagnetic space (and this space may be divide into modules), where a virtual interaction might be created and we will refer to this as a virtual world.

  • Issue Year: 5/2011
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 199-214
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English