As discussed in the previous essays, classic cheating involves sexual activity with a person while one is in a committed relationship that is supposed to exclude such activity. Visual VR can allow interaction with another person, but while such activity might have sexual content (such as nakedness) it would not be sexual activity in the sense that requires physical contact. Such behavior, as argued in the previous essay, might constitute a form of emotional infidelity but not physical infidelity.
One of the iron laws of technology is that any technology that can be used for sex will be used for sex. Virtual reality (VR), in its various forms, is no exception. For the most part, VR is limited to sight and sound. That is, virtual reality is mostly just virtual visual reality (VVR). However, researchers are hard at work developing tactile devices for the erogenous zones, thus allowing people to interact sexually across the internet. This is the start of what could be called “robust” VR that involves more than just sight and sound. This sort of technology might make virtual cheating suitably analogous to real cheating.
Most current research is focused on developing devices for men to use to have “virtual sex.” By the standards of traditional cheating, this sort of activity would not count as cheating. This is because the sexual interaction is not with another person, but with devices. The obvious analogy here is to with less-sophisticated sex toys. If, for example, using a vibrator or blow-up-doll does not count as cheating because the device is not a person, then the same should apply to more complicated devices, such as VR sex suits that can be used with VR sex programs. There is also the question of whether such activity counts as sex. On the one hand, it is some sort of sexual activity. On the other hand, using such a device would not end a person’s tenure as a virgin.
It is worth considering that a user could develop an emotional relationship with their virtual sex “partner” and thus engage in a form of emotional infidelity. An objection is that this virtual sex partner is not a person and thus cheating would not be possible since one cannot cheat on a person with an object.
This can be countered by considering the classic problem of other minds. Because all we have access to is external behavior, one never knows if what seem to be people really are people; that is, they think and feel in the right ways (or at all). Since I do not know if anyone else has a mind as I do, I could have emotional attachments to entities that are not really people at all and never know. So, I could never know if I was cheating in the traditional sense if I had to know that I was interacting with another person. As might be suspected, this sort of epistemic excuse (“baby, I did not know she was a person because of the problem of other minds”) is unlikely to be accepted by anyone (even epistemologists). What would seem to matter is not knowing that the other entity is a person but having the right (or rather wrong) sort of emotional involvement. So, if a person could have feelings towards the virtual sexual partner that they “interact with”, then this sort of behavior could count as virtual cheating because of the one-way emotions.
There are also devices that allow people to interact sexually across the internet; with each partner having a device that communicates with their partner’s corresponding device. Put roughly, this is remote control sex. This sort of activity does avoid many of the possible harms of traditional cheating: there is no risk of pregnancy nor risk of STDs (assuming the equipment is clean). While these considerations do impact utilitarian calculations, the question remains as to whether this would count as cheating or not.
On the one hand, the argument could be made that this is not direct sexual contact as each person is only directly “engaged” with their device. To use an analogy, imagine that someone has (unknown to you) connected your computer to a “stimulation device” so that every time you use your mouse or keyboard, someone is “stimulated.” In such cases, it would be odd to say that you were having sex with that person. As such, this sort of thing would not be cheating.
On the other hand, there is the matter of intent. In the case of the mouse example, the user has no idea what they are doing and it is that, rather than the remote-controlled nature of the activity, that matters. In the case of remote-control interaction, the users are intentionally engaging in the activity and know what they are doing. The fact that is happening via the internet does not matter. The moral status is the same if they were in the same room, using the devices “manually” on each other. As such, while there is not actual bodily contact, the activity is sexual and controlled by those involved. As such, it would morally count as cheating. There can, of course, be a debate about the degrees of cheating. One might argue that cheating using sex toys is not as bad as cheating using body parts. I will, however, leave that to others to discuss.
In the next essay I will discuss cheating in the context sex with robots and person-like VR beings.