Resisting the Gamer's Dilemma
Thomas Montefiore2022, Ethics and Information Technology
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Abstract
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, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between the 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 difference 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 for some degree of both resolving and dissolving the dilemma. This leaves behind, we argue, a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma, since neither approach solves the dilemma for all cases. The argumentative upshot of our paper is that it provides a more contextually sensitive dilemma that accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. This also allows us to reframe alternative approaches that involve other, non-moral, explanations for the intuitive conflict that remains in the narrow dilemma and helps us to set out areas for future empirical work in this area.
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