Knowing Me, Knowing You: An Epistemological Account of Prosocial Behaviour Promoting Virtual Reality and its Ethical Trade-offs

My PhD thesis develops a new account of the epistemology of VR+, which clarifies how VR+ imparts knowledge and addresses key normative concerns. This account intervenes in a central debate in the literature: while some argue that VR+ can fully convey the qualia of oppression, others claim it imparts no knowledge at all. I reject both extremes, showing that VR+ can provide propositional, practical, and grounded inferential knowledge. However, this epistemic potential is double-edged—VR+ can promote perspective-shifting benefits (PSB) but also foster epistemic arrogance and expose users to virtual harms, raising significant ethical and epistemic risks.