Contemporary discussions of "virtual reality," "cyber-space" and "virtual worlds" often lack a substantial philosophical reflection on the function of the imagination without which virtual reality would be neither virtual nor a reality. In this paper, I attempt a phenomenological treatment of virtual reality and the imaginary by developing key insights in Husserl's phenomenological reflections on the imagination, image-consciousness, embodiment and the "irrealization" of subjectivity through the imaginary.
Virtual reality; Second life; Imagination; Subjectivity; Phenomenology; Husserl