Short-term Non-degree Distant Program: Program " Meta-Universes: Philosophy and Methodology of Designing "
Faculty of Philosophy
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PROGRAM OVERVIEW: The program is aimed to all interested in modern digital communication and AI technologies. It is a detailed system description of the process of constructing virtual (including game) worlds. Such worlds are models of possible real-world processes. Philosophy as a form of reflective simulation is able to integrate in a common field problems of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, gaming and non-gaming space, projective use of game technologies (engines, probabilistic models, etc.). Faculty of Philosophy is able to provide different approaches to the topic: ranking in the 50 top in QS the MSU Faculty of Philosophy has the world’s largest educational, scientific, and student community. More than 600 Bas and Mas students and more than 120 PhD students study in 16 Departments of the Faculty every year – Ontology, Epistemology, History of Ideas, Logics, Ethics, Esthetics, Methodology of Science, Political Philosophy, Social Studies, Cultural Studies, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Law, Philosophical Anthropology, Philosophy of Education, Religious Studies, Philosophy of Language and Communication. The topic of the Metaverse has been thrown into the public space by a number of major players in the field of media, virtual games and artificial intelligence quite recently, it has caused heated discussions and a surge of interest in it. At the same time, the authors of this course predicted the relevance of this topic at least two years before in a number of academic and popular publications, as well as in developed training courses. The proposed course was prepared with the support of the academic partner of the Faculty of Philosophy – Epic Games company - and was tested in the form of an inter-faculty course in the spring semester of the 2020- 2021 academic year, bringing together over 250 students from 34 faculties of Moscow State University. In the proposed course, students will be shown a sequence of building the Metaverse with simultaneous reflective assessment: why and why to use certain tools, how and how not to build a virtual universe, in some cases, a civilization, or virtual ethnicity will develop and when not.