A gamer (or player) is a moral agent who plays videogames, and a virtual act is an act which a gamer performs, using her in-game character, on a computer-controlled (but not humancontrolled) character in the game's virtual world. According to Morgan Luck (2009), gamers 2 face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. This is because most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder (which are virtual acts that would have counted as murder had the virtual environment in which they were performed been real), and take these acts to be morally permissible. They are permissible because unlike real murder, no one is harmed in performing them; their only victims are computer-controlled characters, and such characters are neither moral agents nor moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally 3 applies to virtual pedophilia (which are virtual acts that would have counted as pedophelic had the virtual environment in which they were performed been real), but gamers intuitively think that such acts are not morally permissible. The result is a dilemma: either gamers must reject the intuition that virtual pedophelic acts are impermissible and so accept partaking in such acts, or they must reject the intuition that acts of virtual murder are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games.There are multiple ways one might react to this dilemma. Luck (2009), and the subsequent literature that has arisen around the dilemma (specifically, Bartel 2012, Patridge 2013, and Luck & Ellerby 2013), have pursued a solution which rests on finding some morally relevant distinction between the two acts, such that acts of virtual murder, but not virtual pedophilia, can be performed without moral qualms. This, however, is only one way of solving the dilemma. We can clearly see this by considering the premises leading up to the dilemma: P1-Intuitively, gamers believe that virtual murder is morally permissible, and that virtual pedophilia is morally impermissible. This paper benefitted from comments given to me from Bradford Cokelet, Bashshar Haidar, Benjamin Yelle, Chris 1 Bartel and an anonymous reviewer. In addition it benefitted from the comments of the audience at the International 8th Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, and the audience at the American University of Beirut.Sometimes videogames are referred to as computer games, but throughout I will use the term videogames which is 2 the term commonly used by gamers. In some cases, I will omit the word 'video' and use 'game'.Where moral patients are objects of moral consideration, though not morally responsible themselves e.g. babies 3 and in some cases, animals.! 1
A natural starting point for theories of perceptual states, states which include both perceiving and misperceiving, is ordinary perception. 2 Cases of perception are those in which a subject successfully perceives her mind-independent surroundings. When such is the case, it is natural to think of perception as constitutively involving a conscious, sensory relation between the subject and her surroundings, in which those surroundings look, appear, or are presented in some sensory way to the subject. We can call this relation perceptual contact. On this view, perception is, at least primarily, a matter of perceptual contact with worldly objects, where a worldly object is a particular object or event that is part of the material and mind-independent world. This would be a relational view of perception. 3 As I see it, the simplest, and perhaps most naive theory of perceptual states simply generalizes the intuitive characterization of perception to all perceptual states, giving us: Relationalism: 4 The property of a perceiver being in a perceptual state is identical to the property of a perceiver being in perceptual contact with some worldly object(s). 51 This paper benefitted from the feedback of my dissertation committee members, Otavio Bueno, Elijah Chudnoff, Simon Evnine, and Susanna Schellenberg, all of whom helped shape my view. The thorough comments of an anonymous reviewer at Philosophical Studies also helped clarify the paper's argument and organization. Finally, the members of New York University Abu Dhabi's Normativity conference in February 2016, and the members of the American University of Beirut's philosophy department also contributed with their comments to my presentation on part of this paper.4 'Relationalism' is typically used to describe a view of veridical perceptual states, or states of perception. I use the term in a broader sense throughout (unless otherwise stated), applying it to all perceptual states, and not just veridical ones. 5 Here I characterize relationalism as involving the identification of perceptual states with states of perceptual contact with worldly objects. But weaker construals of the view are possible. For instance, one can take perceptual states to constitutively involve perceptual contact with objects without being identical to such contact. I adopt this construal for ease of exposition, nothing in what follows rests specifically on accepting the stronger identity commitment.
How do we assign values to virtual items, which include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In this article, I offer a framework for answering this question. After considering different value theses in the literature, I argue that whether we think these theses mutually exclusive or not turns on our view about the number of value-salient kinds virtual items belong to. Virtual monism is the view that virtual Xs belong to only one value-salient kind in relation to X. Virtual pluralism is the view that they belong to more than one value-salient kind. I argue for two claims. First, virtual monism is mistaken. Minimally some virtual Xs are Xs, while others are not. Second, dualistic virtual pluralism is also mistaken because it is too coarse grained. Instead, I argue for fourfold pluralism: virtual items either represent an original's properties or reproduce essential properties and do so to lesser or greater extents. This gives us four value-salient kinds of virtual X: virtual reproductions, simulations, representations, and simulacra of X. I apply this view to various debates in the literature and conclude with a discussion of less basic hybrid kinds.How do we assign values to virtual items, where virtual items include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In the last decades, this has become an increasingly pressing question, as more of our nonvirtual world has gone virtual with the help of computer technology. This has been and continues to be both exciting and worrying. The 'virtual' has expanded the domain of human freedom. We could not 'tweet' before, now we can. But it has also expanded the realm of human value. How do we go about evaluating 'tweets'? This article's aim is to help us answer these questions by offering a framework for systematically assigning values to (token) virtual items.Various debates focus on virtual value. 1 These include debates on the value of virtual experience, friendship, murder, molestation, theft, and harassment amongst others. A common feature of these debates is a widespread disagreement on the value we should assign to virtual items by comparison to the nonvirtual original, the nonvirtual counterpart. 2 At least four value theses emerge in these debates. Taking X to be a nonvirtual item, we have the: Lesser value thesis: virtual Xs are less valuable than Xs.Higher value thesis: virtual Xs are more valuable than Xs.Equal value thesis: virtual Xs are as valuable as Xs.Sui generis value thesis: virtual Xs offer a distinct value from Xs. 3 One possibility is that of these theses, only one is the correct view for a given debate, or across debates. Another possibility is that more than one value thesis is correct, either
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