Michael Heim’s Concept of “Metaphysics” of Virtual Worlds. A Proposal of Improving it

We analyze Michael Heim’s significant concept of the metaphysics of virtual worlds and show that his concept does not meet the two basic metatheses of metaphysics understood as ontology. First, Heim defines virtual worlds as knowledge, more specifically as informational equivalents of physical things; and worlds understood in this way are not objects in the ontological sense of the term. Secondly, Heim claims that virtual worlds do not exist, and attributes to them various degrees of non-existence, and the metaphysics of non-existent in various degrees virtual objects is extremely hard to accept. We propose replacing these two essential elements in Heim’s concept with others. In result, we form a metaphysics of existent and objectivized virtual worlds, on the basis of the ideas postulated by Heim.