Identity Redux Redux

IDENTITY CLASSIFICATIONS from yesterday with added I^#dentity designations.
I¹dentity - Perception: How I see myself
I²dentity - Projection: How I present myself to others
I³dentity - Conception: How others see me
I⁴dentity - Detection: How I think others seem me
I⁵dentity - Institutional: How official entities define me
I⁶dentity - Social: How social groups define me

One of the far-fetched goals for this journey is to come up with some reasonable criteria for what "real" means when applied to identity. While defining specific identity classes is a necessary step, classifications only specify what we evaluate, not the measurements to use nor the standards upon which we should base judgment.

Is Joe really "too big to get on the boat?" Depending upon the evaluation criteria, you might need to know the class of measurement (height, weight, percentage of body fat) and the unit of measurement (centimeters, inches) and also have the necessary resources to take an accurate measurement.

Judgment can be based on:

• a specified metric: You're too big to get on the boat if you're over 300 lbs;
  
• a relative metric: The five heaviest people in the group will not be allowed on the boat;
• an authority's ruling: The boat's owner thinks you're too big;
  
• social opinion: Everyone in the group thought Joe was too big to get on the boat; or
  
• experiment results: We'll test the effect of objects of various masses and weights.
  

I suspect I've missed at least a few others.

Let's put off discussion of how we might evaluate the validity of standards until another day. For now, before we launch into big questions such as how we might test an identity's reality, let's look at the relatively simple matter of testing its classification.

Treating a classification as an equation is a good approach. [I¹dentity=How I see myself] is true if I experience the identity as a distinct part of who I am, not just a role I play. If not, the identity is not an I¹dentity, although it might be an I²dentity, I³dentity, etc.

That's all today. Please weigh in with your suggestions, critique, links to graphics or whatever else you feel moved to share.

Identity Redux: Part 2 of The (un)reality of virtual life

Ah, back to our old friend Identity. Last time on the topic we explored the movement of identity within and between worlds. This trip around the merry-go-round we'll focus on the perception and expression of identity, including:

Perception: How I see myself
Projection: How I present myself to others
Conception: How others see me
Detection: How I think others seem me
Institutional: How official entities define me
Social: How social groups define me

What am I missing? Any better ways to slice it?

Exploring the (un)reality of virtual life: Part 1

SL is an empathy box. It sorts those who can treat others as real, as feeling beings, as autonomous people, from those who can only treat others as tools...[Second Life] does separate the few who stay from the many who don't. And one boundary between them, I believe, is empathy - is the ability to see this place and these people as real, at least as real as the physical world. From "The Empathy Box" by Sophrosyne Stenvaag

Despite my great fondness and respect for Sophrosyne, I found her recent "Empathy Box" post subtly disquieting. "What's up with that," I wondered for the better part of last week. Try as I might, I couldn't pin down what bothered me. By the weekend, I finally realized that I hadn't been reacting to any specific ideas she proposed, but rather to my own lack of understanding of what words like "reality" and "empathy" mean when they're used in reference to virtual life.

You'd have thought I'd learned my lesson about announcing a series of posts with no idea where they'll end up, but that's what I've decided to do again. Instead of taking a week in the privacy of my own server to journey through dead-ends, wrong turns and unexpected detours, I'm offering you the dubious honor and uncertain pleasure of traveling along with me as I attempt to gain some clarity on the (un)reality of virtual life.

For now, I'll leave us with an initial axiom to consider:

An avatar's personhood exists solely in the underlying sentient being.

By "personhood," I mean

A socially constructed moral category that denotes the inclusion criteria and salient characteristics that distinguish human beings from other forms of life and thus specify the individuals to which we owe particular moral obligations, i.e., those obligations we have to others due to their status as persons. (from Healthcare Ethics)

Let's see where this takes us.

Word Cloud

Here's a "word cloud" displaying the 100 most frequently used words in this blog.

Created by Wordle, a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

What thought is this little chick thinking?

What emotion is this little dude feeling?

Polyamory for Two