A new solution to the gamer’s dilemma
Ethics and Information Technology 17 (4):267-274 (2015)
Abstract
Luck (2009) argues that gamers face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. Most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder, 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 not moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally applies to virtual pedophelia, 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 virtual murder acts are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games. While the prevailing solution to this dilemma has been to try and find a morally relevant feature to distinguish the two cases, I argue that a different route should be pursued. It is neither the case that all acts of virtual murder are morally permissible, nor are all acts of virtual pedophelia impermissible. Our intuitions falter and produce this dilemma because they are not sensitive to the different contexts in which games present virtual acts.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s10676-015-9381-x
My notes
Similar books and articles
Has Bartel resolved the gamer’s dilemma?Morgan Luck & Nathan Ellerby - 2013 - Ethics and Information Technology 15 (3):229-233.
Pornography, ethics, and video games.Stephanie L. Patridge - 2013 - Ethics and Information Technology 15 (1):25-34.
McClennen’s Early Cooperative Solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma.Duncan MacIntosh - 1991 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (3):341-358.
Purgatory and the dilemma of sanctification.Justin D. Barnard - 2007 - Faith and Philosophy 24 (3):311-330.
Restating Augustinian Recipe to Divine Foreknowledge-Libertarian Freewill Dilemma and its Theodical Implications.Adeboye Godwin - manuscript
Restating Augustinian Recipe to Divine Foreknowledge-Libertarian Freewill Dilemma and its Theodical Implication.Adeboye Godwin Oriyomi - manuscript
Lewis's dilemma of explanation under indeterminism exposed and resolved.Philip Percival - 2000 - Mind 109 (433):39-66.
A solution to the discursive dilemma.Ruth Weintraub - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (2):181 - 188.
Equilibria analysis in social dilemma games with Skinnerian agents.Ugo Merlone, Daren R. Sandbank & Ferenc Szidarovszky - 2013 - Mind and Society 12 (2):219-233.
Hegel's Solution to the Dilemma of the Criterion.Kenneth R. Westphal - 1998 - In Jon Stewart (ed.), History of Philosophy Quarterly. SUNY. pp. 173 - 188.
Das moralische Dilemma der nuklearen Abschreckung.Dieter Birnbacher - 1987 - Analyse & Kritik 9 (1-2):175-192.
Self–interest properly felt: Democracy's unintended consequences and tocqueville's solution.David Meskill - 2007 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 19 (1):111-124.
Analytics
Added to PP
2016-02-04
Downloads
585 (#16,547)
6 months
126 (#5,713)
2016-02-04
Downloads
585 (#16,547)
6 months
126 (#5,713)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Introducing the pervert’s dilemma: a contribution to the critique of Deepfake Pornography.Carl Öhman - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 22 (2):133-140.
How to (dis)solve the Gamer’s Dilemma.Erick Jose Ramirez - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (1):1-21.
Has Ali dissolved the gamer’s dilemma?Morgan Luck - 2018 - Ethics and Information Technology 20 (3):157-162.
The Grave Resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma: an Argument for a Moral Distinction Between Virtual Murder and Virtual Child Molestation.Morgan Luck - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (3):1287-1308.
Virtual competitions and the gamer’s dilemma.Karim Nader - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 22 (3):239-245.
References found in this work
The gamer’s dilemma: An analysis of the arguments for the moral distinction between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia.Morgan Luck - 2009 - Ethics and Information Technology 11 (1):31-36.
Resolving the gamer’s dilemma.Christopher Bartel - 2012 - Ethics and Information Technology 14 (1):11-16.
Pornography, ethics, and video games.Stephanie L. Patridge - 2013 - Ethics and Information Technology 15 (1):25-34.
The incorrigible social meaning of video game imagery.Stephanie Patridge - 2010 - Ethics and Information Technology 13 (4):303-312.