Splintering the gamer’s dilemma: moral intuitions, motivational assumptions, and action prototypes

Kjeldgaard‐Christiansen, Jens

doi:10.1007/s10676-019-09518-x

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“… 7 For example, Bartel ( 2012 ), Young ( 2016 ), Kjeldgaard-Christiansen ( 2020 ), and Milne and Ivankovic ( 2021 ). …”

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The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation

Luck

2022

Philosophia

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In this paper a new resolution to the gamer’s dilemma (a paradox concerning the moral permissibility of virtual wrongdoings) is presented. The first part of the paper is devoted to strictly formulating the dilemma, and the second to establishing its resolution. The proposed resolution, the grave resolution, aims to resolve not only the gamer’s dilemma, but also a wider set of analogous paradoxes – which together make up the paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly.

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“… 7 For example, Bartel ( 2012 ), Young ( 2016 ), Kjeldgaard-Christiansen ( 2020 ), and Milne and Ivankovic ( 2021 ). …”

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confidence: 99%

“…In which case the dilemma fails to get off the ground Ali (2015). andRamirez (2020) provide excellent examples of this approach.7 For example,Bartel (2012),Young (2016),Kjeldgaard-Christiansen (2020), andMilne and Ivankovic (2021).…”

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The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation

Luck

2022

Philosophia

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“…For her part, Patridge proposes that, "the nature of actual act[s] of child sexual abuse makes it more difficult morally to see even virtual representations of it as enjoyable. I further suspect that if such an account can be sustained, it will appeal to facts about the relative helplessness of the victims of such actual wrongs […] I suspect that disagreements between gamers who see such content as a bit of harmless fun, and those who see it as morally troubling will debate these very issues" (Patridge 2013: 33; see also Kjeldgaard-Christiansen 2020). The point that we ought to account for relations between fiction and reality, as well as representational details, is well taken.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood

Galbraith

2021

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Based on ongoing fieldwork in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, specifically a targeted subproject from 2014 to 2015, this book explores how and to what effect lines are drawn by producers, players and critics of bishōjo games. Focusing on interactions with manga/anime-style characters, these adult computer games often feature explicit sex acts. Noting that the bishōjo, or “cute girl characters,” in these games can appear quite young, legal actions have been taken in a number of countries to categorize and prohibit the content as child abuse material. In response to the risk of manga/anime images encouraging underage sexualization, lawmakers are moved to regulate them in the same way as photographs or film; triggered by images, the line between fiction and reality is erased, or redrawn to collapse forms together. While Japanese politicians continue to debate a similar course, sustained engagement with bishōjo game producers, players and critics sheds light on alternative movement. Manga/anime-style characters trigger an affective response in interactions with their creators and users, who draw and negotiate lines between fiction and reality. Interacting with characters and one another, bishōjo gamers draw lines between what is fictional and what is “real,” even as the characters are real in their own right and relations with them are extended beyond games; some even see the characters as significant others and refer to them using intimate terms of commitment such as “my wife.” This book argues for understanding the everyday practice of insisting on lines, or drawing a line between humans and nonhumans and orienting oneself toward the drawn lines of the latter, as demonstrating an emergent form of ethics. Occurring individually and socially in both private and public spaces, the response to fictional characters not only discourages harming human beings, but also supports life in more-than-human worlds. For many in contemporary Japan and beyond, interactions and relations with fictional and real others are nothing short of lifelines.

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“…[…] The pleasures of games can give us a motivation to simplify our values in potentially problematic ways. This danger could be considered higher for virtual child molestation than for virtual murder because, in comparison, it represents a clearer (reprehensible) value logic, for example by its autotelic structure (Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, 2020), by discriminating against a certain social groupwomen (Bartel, 2012) or children (Patridge, 2013) -, or by endorsing a specific "morally problematic worldview" (Ostritsch, 2017, 117). All this does not apply to typical cases of virtual murder (of course, exceptions can be constructed).…”

Section: The Consequentialist Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Kantian response to the Gamer’s Dilemma

Ulbricht¹

2023

Ethics Inf Technol

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The Gamer’s Dilemma consists of three intuitively plausible but conflicting assertions: (i) Virtual murder is morally permissible. (ii) Virtual child molestation is morally forbidden. (iii) There is no relevant moral difference between virtual murder and virtual child molestation in computer games. Numerous attempts to resolve (or dissolve) the Gamer’s Dilemma line the field of computer game ethics. Mostly, the phenomenon is approached using expressivist argumentation: Reprehensible virtual actions express something immoral in their performance but are not immoral by themselves. Consequentialists, on the other hand, claim that the immorality of virtual actions arises from their harmful consequences. I argue that both approaches have serious difficulties meeting the moral challenge posed by the Gamer’s Dilemma. They tend to confuse the morality of in-game actions either with the morality of their real-world counterparts or with the morality of games as objects. Following this critical analysis, I will develop a Kantian argument and defend it against two objections. So far, deontological responses to the Gamer’s Dilemma have been sought in vain. Yet, with Kant, its moral challenge can be met by looking at the gamer’s reasons. From this perspective, the Gamer’s Dilemma is based on a false assumption: the moral status of gaming acts does not derive from a normative equation with their real-world counterparts but only from their justifications.

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Splintering the gamer’s dilemma: moral intuitions, motivational assumptions, and action prototypes

Cited by 14 publications

References 42 publications

The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation

The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation

The Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood

A Kantian response to the Gamer’s Dilemma

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