Self, Avatar, Virtual Philosophy

In Hinduism, the source of the term, an Avatar is an incarnation of a deity.  So, the common contemporary use of the term, i. e. a dis-incarnated representation of a corporeal player in a virtual reality context, is antithetical to its original meaning.  Regardless, the concepts of Avatar and Virtual Reality, as commonly understood these days, are hardly novelties.  For, the Self of Descartes, or of Locke, or of Berkeley, or of Hume, is such an Avatar--a dis-incarnated representation of its creator, who is a corporeal writer.  Likewise, the 'world' that it inhabits in such a work is a Virtual Reality.  Hence, these writings can be called Virtual Philosophy.  That is not to say that these Avatars are without Philosophical value.  For example, for Locke, it is an analytical tool that promotes liberation from political dogma, and has pioneered the elaboration of the perceptual process.  However, when ontologized, e. g. by Descartes or Berkeley, its kinship with the Hindu concept of Avatar gets exposed--an attempt to dis-incarnate the embodied Self, in order to re-associate it with an incorporeal deity.  Accordingly, the de-mystification of Virtual Philosophy can begin simply by maintaining the recognition that it is nothing more than a product of an embodied writer.