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

How might we philosophize about the metaverse? It is traditionally held that the four main branches of philosophy are metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. In this article, I shall demonstrate how virtual walt-fictionalism, a particular version of virtual irrealism, is able to offer a straightforward, internally consistent, and powerful response about the metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology (ethics) of the metaverse. I will first characterize the metaverse in terms of a reality-virtuality (RV) continuum and distinguish between virtual realism and virtual irrealism, before elaborating on the explanatory power and potential of virtual walt-fictionalism relative to the metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology (ethics) of the metaverse.

Section: The Gamer's Dilemmamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Gamer's Dilemmamentioning

confidence: 99%

The philosophy of the metaverse

Chen

2023

“…Moreover, significant long-term effects on the gamer's character from specific in-game actions are unlikely (Ferguson, 2 I thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, from which this chapter in particular has benefited substantially. 3 Despite a variety of recent attempts to narrow the dilemma down (Luck 2022;Montefiore & Formosa 2022) or to split it up (Ali 2022;Kjeldgaard-Christiansen 2020), I turn to the Gamer's Dilemma in its original form, which has lost none of its provocative power. Narrowing it down to particularly explosive cases is not necessary, since a full response to the Gamer's Dilemma should not only explain clearcut cases but rather resolve the moral conundrum for all conceivable cases.…”

Section: The Consequentialist Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many cases, moral analogy is implicitly assumed. For example, Luck states that "child molestation is grave enough that, by engaging with it[s] representation in a carefree or light-hearted manner, we treat it too lightly-whilst the same is not true of murder" (Luck, 2022(Luck, , 1306. If we assume that there is indeed a difference of 'graveness' between murder and child molestation (which could be doubted), this might have moral implications for our handling of such crimes but not for our handling of virtual crimes.…”

Section: The Expressivist Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Kantian response to the Gamer’s Dilemma

Ulbricht¹

2023

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.

“…Somewhat easing these interpretive concerns, but not avoiding them altogether, involves a recent resolving strategy by Luck (2022). Luck appeals to the harm done to one's own moral character, but broadens the range of cases in which the Gamer's Dilemma would apply by weakening the relevant moral property that distinguishes virtual murder from virtual child molestation based on the graveness of the latter.…”

Section: Resolving Strategies: the Moral Difference Between Virtual M...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting the Gamer’s Dilemma

Montefiore

Formosa

2022

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area.