Erick Ramirez is assistant professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University and faculty scholar with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Views are his own.
The concept of human dignity—the idea that everyone deserves rights regardless of race, class, gender, ability, or nationality—is a surprisingly new one. The 1948 U.N. declaration of human rights was the first time there’s been a “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” [1]. The authors of that declaration understood this wide-ranging idea of dignity as “the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world” [1].
Things get complicated from there. Although philosophers have suggested that people deserve special protection, they normally didn’t include all people when they made these suggestions. Philosophers disagree not only about what’s supposed to be special about us (Reason? Consciousness? Free will?) but also what we are saying when we say humans deserve dignity (Respect? Legal protections? Moral status?) [2]. Dignity is both a young and complicated idea. Eighty years ago the idea was constructed to serve shared ends but our world is very different than it was in 1948. We are now decades into the “digital” age and we must revisit the idea of dignity.
What’s changing that requires such urgent action? Technologies are giving people the ability to extend themselves into new (digital) worlds and the protections designed in 1948 need adjustment for the mid-21st century. This is especially true for a family of emerging technologies known as XR.
XR tech does something that sounds innocuous: it overlays digital material onto our experience. Virtual reality (VR) is a kind of XR but so are the filters we apply over our photos and videos. Sooner or later we’ll spend most of our time in extended reality—we’ll live, work, and play in a reality augmented with digital overlays. Before we get there we need to ask: what does it mean to respect human dignity in extended reality? One—mistaken—answer is to assume we can just extend current laws and norms respecting dignity in the physical world over to extended reality worlds.
New technologies force us to rethink what it means to be human and what the special protections of “dignity” require. Here’s an analog question posed by philosopher Sean Aas: Is the destruction of someone’s prosthetic limb the destruction of property or a violation of bodily integrity akin to assault [3]? Aas’ answer is that prosthetic limbs, while not biological parts of our bodies, deserve the same legal and moral protections as biological parts because of the role that they play in a person’s life. Respecting dignity means realizing that people and bodies can be simultaneously biological and non-biological.
Deepfakes (realistic photos and videos made with machine learning) pose similar questions about dignity and the body. Although laws against non-consensual distribution of intimate photos and videos are common (e.g., “revenge porn”), deepfakes challenge these laws. A deepfaked video is fictional and laws meant to protect dignity (by protecting privacy) aren’t obviously violated by them. Some states (including California) are making it a crime in some cases to share deepfaked intimate images [4], but these laws are inconsistent. Policymakers are wrestling with the question of whether AI-generated images of our bodies deserve the same protection as images taken with traditional cameras. Should respecting digital dignity cover these new cases?
Extended reality bodies pose similar questions. Early studies of XR suggest that people can form strong attachments to XR embodiment and even come to think of them as a part of who they are [5].
Using a feminine avatar makes me confident not only in VR but also in real life. I feel like that would be actually more real than the real you in real life. Because in real life, you’re stuck with what you were born with. But in VR, you can be what you truly feel like you are inside. This experience actually gave me confidence to start my [gender confirmation] procedure in real life [6].
Research on “the proteus effect” backs up this observation: embodiment in XR has real effects on the way we think, act, and identify [7, 8].
The protections behind dignity, that humans have bodily autonomy that deserves respect and protection, were designed in 1948 when embodiment was entirely physical and biological. Aas already shows that technology can expand what it means to be human. The idea of embodiment, he thought, needs to extend beyond biology to respect what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Digital dignity requires a similar extension of the self, our laws, and norms.
Embodiment in XR, for many of us, will be as important to our sense of identity as physical embodiment is today. Although we don’t yet live in a blended reality world (one where extended reality overlays are as ubiquitous a part of our lives as the Internet and social media are now), that time is coming. Revolutionary technologies have a habit of changing our world in ways that are hard to notice until we’re past the point of no return. By the time we recognize we’re living in blended reality it’ll be too late to protect ourselves from its worst features. Now is the time to ask how our laws need to change to protect the inherent dignity of people in XR: who should own XR bodies [9, 10]? How can we protect ourselves from new forms of harassment these technologies enable [11]?
A uniquely digital dignity requires that we extend the moral and legal protections afforded to physical bodies to include non-physical digital layers. Digital dignity requires an expansion of the self.
References
[1] Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations
[2] Dignity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
[3] Aas, S. (2021). Prosthetic embodiment. Synthese, 198, 6509-6532
[4] Bill Text - SB-926 Crimes: distribution of intimate images.
[5]Freeman, G., & Maloney, D. (2021). Body, avatar, and me: The presentation and perception of self in social virtual reality. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(3) CSCW Article No. 239, 1 - 27.
[6] Freeman, G., Zamanifard, S., Maloney, D., & Adkins, A. (2020). My body, my avatar: How people perceive their avatars in social virtual reality. CHI ’20 Extended Abstracts, April 25–30
[7] Yee, N., & Bailenson, J. (2007). The Proteus Effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 271–290.
[8]Ratan, R., Beyea, D., Li, B. J., &; Graciano, L. (2019). Avatar characteristics induce users’ behavioral conformity with small-to-medium effect sizes: A meta-analysis of the proteus effect. Media Psychology, 23(5), 651–675.
[9] Ramirez, E. (2022). The ethics of virtual and augmented reality: Building worlds. New York, NY: Routledge
[10] Ramirez, E., Jennett, S., Clay, D., & Gandhi, M. (2023). Extended reality, control, and problems of the Self. In Andrew Kissel & Erick Ramirez (Eds), Exploring extended realities: Metaphysical, psychological, and ethical challenges . Routledge: 104-129
[11] Ramirez, E.J., Jennett, S., Tan, J., Campbell, S., & Gupta, R. (2023). XR embodiment and the changing nature of sexual harassment. Societies, 13 (2), 36
