Philip Zhai also known as Zhai Zhenming is a philosopher who writes in both English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

.

Zhai is the author of Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality (1998: Rowman & Littlefield), in which he argues that the logical extreme of virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

 is ontologically

Ontology

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...

 equivalent to actual reality. Zhai also writes about cyberspace

Cyberspace

Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...

 in light of its connection to virtual reality. The other book that he's written in English is The Radical Choice and Moral Theory (1994: Kluwer).

Zhai began to write philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 in Chinese in 2000, when he took a professorship in philosophy at Zhongshan University, China. When Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty

Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...

 visited China in July 2004, Zhai confronted Rorty's neo-pragmatism

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...

 with his own reciprocal transcendentalism

Transcendentalism

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...

.

External links

• Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality — Zhai's Web page (closed)