Volume 23 (2020): Edizione 1 (December 2020)

This paper will philosophically extend Julian Leff’s Avatar therapy paradigm (AT) for voice-like hallucinations that was initially proposed for treatment-resistant Schizophrenia patients into the realm of gesture-enhanced embodied cognition and Virtual Reality (VR), entitled ^g+TA (gesture-enhanced Avatar Therapy). I propose an philosophy of technology approach of embodied rhetorics of triadic kinetic “actions” in the sense of Charles Sanders Peirce that transforms the voice hallucination incorporated by an avatar- and that can confront acousmatic voice-like hallucinations with a method of gesture synchronization and dyssynchronization and gestural refusal of interaction that the player with the Avatar can resist in full embodiment. This paper therefore introduces a gesture-enhanced, extended version of Cybertherapy with Avatars that tackle multimodal bodily experience of voice-like hallucinations beyond mere visual or auditory stimulation. This is put forward theoretically in a 4E-cognition approach that expands Avatar Therapy with gestures into VR.

The expression “end of nature” has been coined by American environ-mentalist Bill McKibben is his 1989 famous book, The End of Nature. Since then, the philosophical implications of such an obituary have been explored, mainly on an ethical perspective over the environment. The conceptual end of nature is one of those implications, in the context of a post-naturalistic environmental philosophy. Our purpose is to build upon the ambiguities of “nature” and reframe some readings of the concept of “integrity” as a guiding principle in the relation between human beings and the environment.