The Avatar Extended Self: Narrative Identity and Virtual Ethics

A pressing question for the philosophy of personal identity in the digital age is the extent to which people can be identical to their various digital self-representations, from virtual avatars and social media profiles to AI digital duplicates and future mind uploads. This article addresses this question in the case of virtual avatars: user-controlled, visual representations of self in online environments like video games and virtual reality worlds. I interpret the metaphysical relationship between avatar and user implied by the ‘avatar identity question’ through the lens of the extended self thesis. Drawing on the narrative theory of identity, I argue for the avatar extended self (AES): the view that virtual avatars can become constitutive components of a user’s personhood. After establishing criteria for avatar-user narrative integration and responding to objections to the view, I examine its ethical implications, arguing that AES raises the ethical significance of virtual actions involving one’s avatar and, in so doing, sheds light on the question of what grounds the moral weight of virtual phenomena.