Abstract
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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27 June 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00551-7
Notes
It is worth noting that Heinrichs (2020) believes that this type of analogy (between an actual wrongdoing and it’s virtual counterpart) “while occasionally resulting in correct results by chance—leads to absurd results when applied across the board” (p.2).
The ‘just a game’ defence is also sometime known as the ‘magic circle’ defence. For a great overview of this defence see Nguyen (2017).
Although Ali (2015) gives us reason to think that certain instances of virtual child molestation may be permissible.
It has been argued elsewhere (Luck & Ellerby, 2013) that Bartel might only intend to provide an explanation of virtual child molestation’s impermissibility that does not apply to virtual murder (which would not resolve the dilemma), rather than an argument for a relevant difference between them (which would). For our purposes, we will put this possibility aside.
Note that, like Bartel, I think the sexualisation of inequality may be playing an important role. For it is also an instance of oppression, which may help to explain why some wrongdoings are graver than others. I flesh this out in Section 7.0.
Although perhaps not sound. Luck and Ellerby (2013) provide reason to question the truth of premise 4; as not all instances of virtual child molestation are pornographic (e.g. an instance of molestation that is initiated by the player, but not depicted – imagine the screen fades to black after a player initiates the act then the game picks up in such a way that we a clear about what has just occurred).
If Ali (2015) and Nader (2020) are correct, then this difficulty may be explained by the fact that there is no dilemma to limit. For they argue when comparing virtual wrongdoings of similar games types the dilemma dissolves. So (putting aside the possibility that the dilemma might hold when comparing wrongdoings in different games types) the edges of the dilemma might not be there to be found.
Ali argues that when virtual wrongdoings have similar in-game contexts, the permissibility of these acts will also be similar. For example, if virtual murder and virtual child molestation both occur within the a storytelling game where “neither the representations nor the viewpoint of the game are objectionable”(p.271), then both acts will be permissible. Likewise, if these virtual acts both occur in simulations, then both acts will be impermissible. This leads to the conclusion that, when the acts being compared occur in the same context there is no dilemma. In other words, when comparing similarly positioned acts, if 1 is true then 3 will be false (and vice versa).
By limiting the gamer’s context this way Ali (2015) attempts to saves the dilemma from becoming trivial. For without it he argues the “morality of virtual acts will turn on whether the gamer engages with these acts in a morally perverse manner or not, and not on the type of act performed (p.269).
Nader (2020) doubts such a case could be an instance of the gamer’s dilemma; for “in competitive games where the players are murdering/molesting non-participants in the competition, both virtual murder and virtual child molestation are intuitively impermissible since the rules do not override our intuition”; as opposed to, for example, boxing matches – where the rules of the competition override our intuition that hitting someone is wrong, as “it is permissible to hit your opponent within a boxing match…because by entering into the ring they consent to it” (Luck, p.282). However, there are plenty of instances where murdering NPCs have occurred in competitive games with few complaints. For example, for many years one could murder innocent hostages in Counter-Strike (until the hostages were made invulnerable in later versions), and in Rampage (a competitive game in which you play a monster) you are rewarded for murdering humans. Both games were hugely successful. However, their success would probably been curtailed somewhat were they to feature the rape of children, rather than the murder of adults.
This is not to suggest that all forms of entertainment that treat child molestation in a comedic way will be intuitively impermissible. For example, transgressive comedies such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Family Guy routinely treat child molestation in such a way. However, the context of such shows (be it their satirical nature, or some other feature), seems to eliminate, or at least obfuscate, our normal intuitions regarding the graveness of such matters. However, such features are in limited supply in Midsomer.
This is not to say that the active nature of games is irrelevant; it just can’t be a necessary property of the resolution (if the resolution is to apply to the wider set). But this still allows for the active nature of games to play a key role in an indirect way (for a subset of the dilemmas). For if we discover that all fictional wrongdoings that have property A are impermissible, and one way for a fictional wrongdoing to have this property is for gamers to act in a certain way, then their activity is will be salient (insofar as it relates to property A). But this can’t be the only way for a fictional wrongdoings to have property A (otherwise property A couldn’t be used to resolve the wider set of dilemmas).
A further example of this shift in thinking is presented by Kieran (2006) regarding the French movie Man Bites Dog. This movie is about Ben, a serial killer who is portrayed as both “funny and charming, talking about having to do [i.e. kill] a postman on the first day of every month and the difficulties involved in getting rid of dead bodies (especially midgets)” (p.138). However, although cinema audiences found Ben’s murderous exploits funny, the mood changes abruptly; as Kieran reports, “everyone laughed up until the central [rape] scene and from then on the atmosphere was deadly quiet” (p.138). This shift in intuitions is also reflected in an experiment by Sabo and Giner-Sorolla (2017). They conclude,
…that one may be given a pass for enjoying violent video games and films, or having aggressive thoughts towards another individual. Consequently, these fantasies may be seen as relatively benign and nonconsequential. When the fictional acts, however, involve a bizarre and socially unacceptable use of the body, they are not granted the same pass that is given to fictional social harm. Not only do these acts signal a poor character, they are seen as a cause of future indiscretions. As it turns out, not all fiction is treated equally and, while it is all make-believe, impure fiction is associated with very real consequences. (p.152)
Care must be taken here, as the term ‘fictional wrongdoing’ might be understood in different ways. Consider the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar. Upon witnessing the murder of Caesar during a production of this play you might whisper to your friend “This isn’t fiction, it actually happened in 44 B.C.E!”; in this sense the murder is not fictional. However, your friend responds “This is a play. No one has actually been murdered”; in this sense the murder is fictional. It is the latter sense that it intended here. The term fictional wrongdoing has also been adopted by Mildenberger (2017) and Tilson (2018) in this context. It might also be worth quickly considering the distinction between virtual and fictional wrongdoings. The term ‘virtual wrongdoing’ typically refer to wrongdoings that are represented in computer games (or digital worlds). Whereas the term ‘fictional wrongdoing’ refers here to a representation of a wrongdoing. So, whilst all virtual wrongdoings are fictional wrongdoings, not all fictional wrongdoings are virtual (for example, a murder in a T.V. drama is a fictional murder, but not a virtual murder).
Interestingly, although a professional gamer may not be treating a first person shooter game lightly when they ‘play’ it, it may still be possible for them to treat the representations of violence contained within the game lightly (by, for example, being unconcerned with what they might represent).
For example, imagine an case where a detective guffaws at a murder report (perhaps because the victim had a funny name), and then later guffaws at a child molestation report (perhaps for the same reason). If we were to judge the earlier guffaw permissible but not the later, but we can’t easily point to a relevant difference, then our puzzlement might also be captured by this paradox. In other words, the paradox doesn’t require fictional wrongdoings to take center stage (as the murders in this case are actual).
It is worth noting two concerns with this approach. That, by establishing a single paradox that encompasses the wider set of analogous paradoxes, we might: (a) make it harder for people to see that these paradoxes, although related, may be distinct and should be dealt with accordingly; and (b) if a resolution is found, it may only offer a resolution by appealing to the most general property shared by the analogous paradoxes. In regard to point (a), this is valid concern with all ethical justifications that are proposed to be far reaching. For example, one of the strengths of utilitarianism is that can apply to all ethical decisions. However, if moral particularism is true then, utilitarianism will similarly obscure the truth. In regard to (b), were a resolution to apply only by virtue of the most general property shared by the analogous paradoxes, then the resolution will be simple (by virtue of turning on a single property), and strong (by virtue of being applicable to all the paradoxes). And whether it is worth sacrificing simplicity in order to gain further strength will be a question worth considering when comparing potential resolutions.
In fact, the grave resolution is very much inspired by Patridge’s incorrigible social meaning account (2013). Both propose that certain contingent facts about wrongdoings may require that they be taken more seriously, and both have a wider scope - applying to more than just cases of virtual wrongdoing. However, whilst Partridge focuses on people enjoying fictional wrongdoings, the grave resolution focuses on people treating wrongdoings lightly (where enjoying something might be one way to treat it lightly, but not the only way). Similarly, Patridge focuses on fictional wrongdoings that have “an incorrigible social meaning that targets groups of individuals…and minorities”(304), whilst the grave resolution focuses on the graveness of a wrongdoing (where the targeting a minority might be one way for a wrongdoing to be graver, but not the only way).
My thanks to a blind reviewer for this suggestion.
My thanks to a blind reviewer for this suggestion.
Although all acts of oppression are grave, it does not follow that all grave wrongdoings are acts of oppression. For example, intentionally causing a catastrophic bushfire is a grave wrongdoing (both serious and solemn), although it is not an act of oppression.
Patridge makes the same point in respect to incorrigible social meaning.
And there may be empirical support for both the too soon and too close phenomena. For example, regarding jokes about tragedies, McGraw et al. (2014) found that the passing of time “creates a comedic sweet spot that occurs when the psychological distance from a tragedy is large enough to buffer people from threat (creating a benign violation)…” (p.566). Likewise, a study by Cesarei and Codispoti (2008) suggested the smaller and lower the resolution of an image, the less-pronounced our emotions about the image would be. They note evidence that: "
The largest activation [of emotional responses] follows real world stimuli that contain the largest number of descriptive features, for example, feeling the contact with a real poisonous [sic] snake. In comparison, progressively impoverished versions of the same stimulus that only preserve some of the original features (e.g., a picture or a drawing depicting a snake) would be less effective in activating nodes of associative networks and, therefore, would result in less-pronounced emotional responses…"(p.360)
However, even if studies indicate that the greater the psychological distance (be it in time, or in closeness to the actual world) from something like a tragedy or a venomous snake, the less likely it is to elicit a pronounced negative response (such as a feeling of graveness), this may not get us too far. For although evidence of such intuitions is a helpful start, what we are looking for a moral justification for the intuition that we should permit one type of action, but not another. We are not looking for a psychological explanation for the intuition that one type of action is permissible, but not another. The projects are distinct (unless one is an ethical naturalist).
This may correspond to how we actually may make moral judgments. Sabo and Giner-Sorolla’s (2017) experiments identified that fictional purity violations (such as virtual child molestation) are evaluated more negatively than fictional acts that are harmful, but are not purity violations (such as virtual murder), as they are “seen as more diagnostic of bad character” (p.134). (However, we should be wary not to confuse is with ought here.)
There have also recently been two worthwhile attempts at providing a Kantian account of the wrongness of virtual murder. However, I am less sure these attempts could be modified to explain the wrongness of treating fictional wrongdoings lightly. For example, Tilson (2018) argues that virtual/simulated murder is always to some extent wrong “by virtue of constituting a disrespectful act” (p.206) – but deliberately does not extend his argument the mere representation of a wrongdoing. Likewise Flattery (2021) argues that some instances of virtual murder may occur where the player “might employ maxims that would fail to satisfy the Categorical Imperative” – but these instance relate to cases where we “find ourselves mistaking—or being led to mistake—the virtual for the real” (p.10). Alternatively Milne & Ivankovic (2021) provide a potential consequentialist resolution to the gamer’s dilemma, arguing that “the taboo against paedophilia not only exists, unlike any taboo against murder, but also seems more easily justifiable on a rule-consequentalist basis” (p.15). This account I think could more easily be adapted to explain the wrongness of treating fictional wrongdoings lightly. As doing so in cases of off-limit wrongdoings may be taboo, and these taboos (as a rule) protect us from harm (it might be argued).
It is worth noting that, following Ali (2015), there may be cases of virtual murder that are off-limits (e.g. in a baby murder simulation game), and cases of virtual child molestation that are fair-game (e.g. in a story game where the narrative makes it clear the act should not be treated lightly). So, we cannot assume all cases of virtual child molestation are graver than all cases of virtual murder. And in cases where the graveness of such acts are the same, the gamer’s dilemma will not hold (which is perhaps another way of framing Ali’s central thesis). But this possibility still allows for the dilemma to hold in cases where the graveness of virtual child molestation is sufficiently graver than that of virtual murder. And, somewhat contrary to Ali, the grave resolution doesn’t necessitate that virtual impermissible acts that have similar in-game contexts will also have similar levels of graveness (although it doesn’t exclude the possibility either).
My thanks to Rami El Ali, Christopher Bartel, Wylie Breckenridge, Daniel Cohen, Ryan Dennison, Hayley Gifford, Stephanie Patridge, Emma Rush, John Tilson, Suzanne Uniacke, & Garry Young.
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Luck, M. The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation. Philosophia 50, 1287–1308 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00455-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00455-y