We are witnessing the collapse of the post-war consensus, the implosion of the caring society. In times of social, economic, and political insecurity, egotism spreads, and most popular videogames are designed following a logic of consumerist self-gratification and self-empowerment. Deeply political, they contribute to the transformation of players into lacking members of our societies. Consequently, we need to affect change in what game designers do by changing both why and how they do it. Using the reach of the mainstream market, (...) we can promote awareness of the socio-political and cultural contexts we live in and critical, active, and responsible participation. Videogames remind us that we can never be isolated in a universe defined by complexity and interlaced, dynamic systems. We can develop our societies towards a game logic of playful freedom and rules-based constraints in an effective and affective way, if we make the essential connection between the leading medium of the 21st century and a suggested new Neo-Kantian virtual ethics built upon notions of autonomous agency, mutual respect, and obligation. Such videogames address the human being in its entirety, like no other medium in history before, as a thinking, acting, and feeling responsible agent through engagement, immersion, and involvement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Videogames and Interactive FictionGrant TavinorIIn the third-person crime simulator Grand Theft Auto 3, the fictional performing of all sorts of criminal nuisance is a possibility. (Squeamish readers, or those that are adamant videogames are playing a decisive role in the moral degeneration of modern society might want to turn away now!) Here is one possibility for players of the game: while driving around in the rundown red-light district of (...) Portland Island, try stopping beside one of the women dressed in leather dresses and knee-high stockings who say things like "Have you ever been down south?" The fictional woman will bend down to the car window and eventually hop in. Now drive to a secluded area, stop the car, and wait. What happens? The car begins to rock up and down, slowly at first, and then more quickly, squeaking all the while. As it does, your health meter increases and the cash meter decreases. Eventually, after the car has stopped rocking, the prostitute exits and walks away. This is all obviously of questionable taste. But the really horrible part is that it is possible to mug the prostitute and take back your money!Though I am reluctant to tell you this, the first time I discovered the trick, I felt a sort of sadistic joy at my reprehensible behavior. Friends in the room at the time thought the whole incident hilarious; except for one who thought it extremely revolting. Perhaps now though, I feel guilty for what I did to the prostitute. (Hence my reluctance to let you know of my sinister fictional activities!) Of course, this episode raises a host of ethical questions; I will not attempt to answer them here. What I am interested in is the possibility of fictional interaction itself. The important point is that this fictive episode seems to show that it is possible in the case of videogames to feel guilty or ashamed for what one [End Page 24] does in a fictional world. But how is this possible? What does interacting with a videogame amount to that it allows for this intimate (and dubious) emotional connection?There is a wide and impressive literature in the analytic philosophy of the arts concerning the nature of fiction and the practice that surrounds it; this literature gives us an ideal theoretical basis from which to explore the topic of videogames. But also, videogames will allow us to return our attention to the theory, perhaps perceiving areas in which it can be improved, so as to become more generally applicable. I begin this paper by setting out some initial descriptive examples of the ways in which videogames are interactive fictions. After discussing an ambiguity in the notion of what it is to interact with a fiction, I deal with two prominent aspects of that interaction; that focused on fictive props, and the apparent interaction players have with fictional worlds. Next, I argue that the interactive nature of videogames alters the character of our interest in them. Rather than a focus on interpretive and sympathetic engagement with narratives, videogames involve their appreciators in an active engagement with the problem spaces or kinetic narratives of gameplay. Finally, I argue that because action and emotion are close cognitive bedfellows, and because emotion plays an important role in the psychology of fictive practice, that the emotions experienced by videogame players will be distinctive to that fictive form.IIVideogames provide their players with a variety of opportunities for interactive engagement. The last ten years have seen significant development in the extent of the fictive interactivity of videogames, especially with the advent of the "next generation" consoles such as Playstation 2 and X-Box, and the burgeoning genre of PC gaming. With the intention of providing some descriptive substance for the following theoretical discussions, in this section I present some examples of the ways in which modern videogames are interactive fictions, and how they differ to more traditional fictive forms in this respect.Many videogames involve exploring an environment. In Grand Theft Auto 3, the player, in the guise of a criminal protagonist, is able to explore the streets of Liberty City. Completing the objectives of the... (shrink)

There has been a recent surge of research interest in videogames of moral engagement for entertainment, advocacy and education. We have seen a wealth of analysis and several theoretical models proposed, but experimental evaluation has been scarce. One of the difficulties lies in the measurement of moral engagement. How do we meaningfully measure whether players are engaging with and affected by the moral choices in the games they play? In this paper, we survey the various standard psychometric instruments from the (...) moral psychology literature and discuss how they might be applied in the evaluation of games. (shrink)

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that (...) these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise. (shrink)

This chapter explores a range of significant similarities and differences between videogames and films. It also examines the relationship between the philosophies of each. We begin by addressing the definition of videogames and the question of whether they count as a subcategory of some other artistic kind, namely, film or the moving image. We then turn to the debate about the art status of videogames and compare this to the debate concerning the art status of films. We go on to (...) explore the nature of interactivity in videogames and ask whether videogame interactivity differs from the kind of interactivity that one can find in other artistic domains. We conclude by exploring various ethical issues relating to videogames and, again, compare these to related issues which arise with respect to film. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive and accessible characterisation of the first-person shooter videogame genre. After providing an overview of the history of the first-person shooter videogame genre, Alberto Oya comments on the various defining peculiarities of this genre, namely the first-person perspective, the shooting gaming mechanics, the heroic in-game narrative or background story, and multiplayer gaming. Oya also argues that educators can use first-person shooter videogames to encourage their students to reflect on historical and philosophical issues.

This collection of essays is devoted to the philosophical examination of the aesthetics of videogames. Videogames represent one of the most significant developments in the modern popular arts, and it is a topic that is attracting much attention among philosophers of art and aestheticians. As a burgeoning medium of artistic expression, videogames raise entirely new aesthetic concerns, particularly concerning their ontology, interactivity, and aesthetic value. The essays in this volume address a number of pressing theoretical issues related to these areas, (...) including but not limited to: the nature of performance and identity in videogames; their status as an interactive form of art; the ethical problems raised by violence in videogames; and the representation of women in videogames and the gaming community. _The Aesthetics of Videogames _is an important contribution to analytic aesthetics that deals with an important and growing art form. (shrink)

In just a few decades, there's been the birth and fast rise of a recreational activity that implies the interaction between one or multiple players with electronic devices, normally, known as videogames. Being a very complex process and a multi-sensorial practice, playing with videogames produces intense and fulfilling experiences for all those who engage in such activity. Here, I intend to show how those experiences entail relevant aesthetic – and also cognitive and ethical – values for philosophical discussion.

Morality meters are a commonly used mechanic in many ethically notable video games. However, there have been several theoretical critiques of such meters, including that people can find them alienating, they can instrumentalise morality, and they reduce morality to a binary of good and evil with no room for complexity. While there has been much theoretical discussion of these issues, there has been far less empirical investigation. We address this gap through a qualitative study that involved participants playing a custom-built (...) visual novel game (The Great Fire) with different intuitive and counter-intuitive morality meter settings. Overall, we found that players’ attitudes towards the morality meter in this game was complex, context sensitive and variable throughout gameplay and that the intuitiveness of the meter encouraged participants to treat the meter more ‘as a moral guide’ that prompts reflection and less ‘as a score’ to be engaged with reactively. (shrink)

Rapid development of e-learning courses for ethics-and-compliance programs led to substantial success in producing engaging multimedia training toolkits aimed at breaking through barriers of indifference and distrust by combining learning with fun. However, a pleasant training experience is no guarantee of its ultimate success in improving organizational ethics. Drawing on Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory, this paper presents a model for evaluating multimedia learning from a moral viewpoint. The main argument advanced in the paper is that entertaining multimedia training (...) modules, as commonly offered in the business world, may deliver an unintended message which runs counter to the very goal of ethics training. The Rocked or Shocked? videogame—a multimedia-based ethics training module—will serve as a case study for detecting the complicated role of entertainment in ethics training and examining the ethical meanings conveyed through the pictorial/event channel. The paper concludes with recommendations for the design of multimedia ethics training. (shrink)

The hypothesis that we may be living in a digital simulation is utilized as a ‘thought experiment’ to help clarify important questions in theology and philosophy, including the nature of God, the significance and importance of an afterlife, and the ultimate nature of reality. It is argued that a consideration of the simulation hypothesis renders problematic traditional conceptions of a personal, creator, omnipotent deity, makes the theological significance of a purported afterlife far less significant, and paradoxically undermines the very materialistic (...) view of reality that underlies the simulation hypothesis in the first place. It is concluded that the simulation hypothesis renders ‘science’ virtually irrelevant to ultimate questions in philosophy and theology and elevates ethics and axiology to fundamental status for our understanding of reality and any defensible conception of the divine. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the way the videogame The Last of Us: Part II (Naughty Dog, 2020) manages to entice players to question the ethical adequacy of their own gaming behaviour.

Combining perspectives from both continental and analytic philosophy, this timely volume explores how imagination today both shapes and is shaped by technology, art and ethics. Imagination is one of the most significant and broadly examined concepts in contemporary philosophy and is frequently understood as a basic human faculty that enables complex activities. This book shows, however, that imagination is more than a mere enabler. Whilst imagination shapes our experiences, it is at the same time shaped by our environments. Some (...) of the most creative manifestations of imagination are the result of its two-way interaction with art or technology, or both. In short, imagination co-shapes us. Beyond the traditional perspectives of Kant and Heidegger, The Philosophy of Imagination: Technology, Art and Ethics examines our dynamic relationship with imagination, from contemporary technological advancements such as AI that transform the whole ecosystem to imagination in the context of videogames and literary fiction. Analysing societal imagination, it addresses the relationship between the racial imaginary and white ignorance, as well as the effects that societal mechanisms such as lockdowns can have on our imagination. Taking its cue from the here and now, this volume brings together leading international scholars to investigate how the concept of co-shaping allows us to see imagination and its crucial role in society in new and productive ways. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This book investigates the interrelations between aesthetics, ethics and politics in a variety of visual media forms, ranging across art installations, film and television, interactive documentaries, painting, photography, social media and videogames. An international mix of emerging and established authors, with interdisciplinary expertise, explores how different ethical questions, political implications and aesthetic pleasures arise and shape one another in distinct visual media. Investigating themes such as the use of cinema as a medium for ethical and political thought, how documentary (...) subjects both conceal and reveal truth, the new ethical challenges arising from interactive media and the role of images in responding to political events and trauma, this is a groundbreaking work about the interrelations of aesthetic, ethical and political values in visual media. (shrink)

The gamer’s dilemma, initially proposed by Luck (Ethics and Information Technology 11(1):31–36, 2009) posits a moral comparison between in-game acts of murder and in-game acts of paedophilia within single-player videogames. Despite each activity lacking the obvious harms of their real-world equivalents, common intuitions suggest an important difference between them. Some responses to the dilemma suggest that intuitive responses to the two cases are based on important differences between the acts themselves or their social meaning. Others challenge the fundamental assumptions (...) of the dilemma. In this paper, we identify and explore key imaginative and emotional differences in how certain types of in-game violence are experienced by players, consider how these differences factor into the moral lives of players, and use these insights to resolve the dilemma. The view we develop is that the key moral emotion in offensive video gameplay is self-repugnance. This is not repugnance of the act one directs a game character to perform in the game, nor repugnance of the character one plays. It is repugnance of oneself in playing the game. If self-repugnance is a fitting emotional response to playing a videogame, then this is prima facie grounds for thinking it is wrong to play the videogame. Our approach to the gamer’s dilemma is to distinguish the fittingness conditions of self-repugnance from the fittingness conditions of other moral emotions as they pertain to playing videogames. We argue that because of the virtual character of the actions performed in video games, self-repugnance is a fitting response to particular kinds of offensive gameplay. On the other hand, in-game murder is not invariably a fitting ground for self-repugnance. We argue that this difference is grounded in imaginative responses to the harm of death and the harms of profound suffering. Our task is to explain and justify this difference in fittingness conditions and use this to resolve the gamer’s dilemma. (shrink)

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how these skills can be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, judgement and action – and describe (...) the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between these games. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Videogames present deep challenges for traditional concepts of sport and games. Cybersport in particular suggests that sport might be transposed into digital arenas, and videogames in general provide apparently striking counterexamples to the orthodox Suitsian theory of games, seeming to lack strictly prelusory goals and perhaps even also constitutive rules. I argue as follows: if any cybersports count as genuine sports, it will be those most closely resembling uncontroversial core instances of sport, those that essentially involve gross motor skill. Even (...) so, we might reject cybersports as sport by distinguishing physical skills’ domain of execution from their domain of application, sport implying the non-virtual status of both. Although, like chess, videogames appear to lack prelusory goals, chess conventions and nominal descriptions of the object of any videogame suggest the possibility of Suitsian compliance, as does the inclusion of ‘cheat codes’ in videogame programming. Perhaps such... (shrink)

Transgression in Games and Play is a collection of original research that explores what transgression means in the context of videogames and play, how boundaries are being crossed by game content as well as by player actions, and how players respond to different kinds of infringements. It explores questions such as: How are controversial game content experienced during the course of gameplay? Why would players intentionally put themselves or others under distress when playing games, and how does such content affect (...) the playful attitude? Are there any ethical or aesthetical limits for what type of contents that can be presented in games? If so, are these limits different from other media? What are the means and motivation for designers to create transgressive game content. (shrink)

Garry Young has made three objections against Sebastian Ostritsch’s endorsement view on the immorality of computer games. In this paper, we want to defend the endorsement view against all three of them.

Can a player be held morally responsible for the choices that she makes within a videogame? Do the moral choices that the player makes reflect in any way on the player’s actual moral sensibilities? Many videogames offer players the options to make numerous choices within the game, including moral choices. But the scope of these choices is quite limited. I attempt to analyze these issues by drawing on philosophical debates about the nature of free will. Many philosophers worry that, (...) if our actions are predetermined, then we cannot be held morally responsible for them. However, Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilist account of free will suggests that an agent can be held morally responsible for actions that she wills, even if the agent is not free to act otherwise. Using Frankfurt’s analysis, I suggest that videogames represent deterministic worlds in which players lack the ability to freely choose what they do, and yet players can be held morally responsible for some of their actions, specifically those actions that the player wants to do. Finally, I offer some speculative comments on how these considerations might impact our understanding of the player’s moral psychology as it relates to the ethics of imagined fictional events. (shrink)

Introduction -- "Mediating estrangement: a theory for diplomacy," review of International Studies (April, l987), 13, pp. 91-110 -- "Arms, hostages and the importance of shredding in earnest: reading the national security culture," Social Text (Spring, 1989), 22, pp. 79-91 -- "The (s)pace of international relations: simulation, surveillance and speed," International Studies Quarterly (September 1990), pp. 295-310 -- "Narco-terrorism at home and abroad," Radical America (December 1991), vol. 23, nos. 2-3, pp. 21-26 -- "The terrorist discourse: signs, states, and systems of (...) global political violence," World Security: Trends and Challenges at Century's End, ed. M. Klare and D. Thomas, St. Martin's Press (1991), pp. 237-265. -- "S/N: international theory, balkanisation, and the new world order," Millennium Journal for International Studies (Winter 1991), vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 485-506 -- "Cyberwar, videogames, and the Gulf War syndrome," Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War (Cambridge, Ma and Oxford, UK, 1992), pp. 173-202 -- "Act IV: fathers (and sons), mother courage (and her children), and the dog, the cave, and the beef," in Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations, ed. James N. Rosenau (Boulder, Co and Oxford, Uk: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 83-96 -- "The value of security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche and Baudrillard," in the Political Subject of Violence, ed. G.M. Dillon and David Campbell, Manchester University Press (1993), pp. 94-113 -- "The C.I.A., Hollywood, and sovereign conspiracies," Queen's Quarterly (Summer 1993), vol. 100, no. 2, pp. 329-347 -- "Great men, monumental history, and not-so-grand theory: a meta-review of Henry Kissinger's diplomacy," Forum review article, Mershon International Studies Review (april 1995), vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 173-180 -- "Post-theory: the eternal return of ethics in international relations," New Thinking in International Relations Theory, eds. Michael Doyle and John Ikenberry (New York: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 55-75 -- "Cyber-deterrence," Wired (September 1994), 2.09., p. 116 (plus 7 pages) -- "Global swarming, virtual security, and Bosnia," the Washington Quarterly (Summer 1996), vol. 19, n0. 3., pp. 45- 56 -- "The simulation triangle," 21c (issue 24, 1997), pp. 19-25 -- "Virtuous war and hollywood," the Nation (3 april 2000), pp. 41-44 -- "Virtuous war/virtual theory," International Affairs (fall, 2000), pp. 771-788 -- "Hedley Bull and the case for a post-classical approach," International Relations at LSE: a History of 75 Years (London: Millennium Publishing Group, 2003), pp. 61-87. "the illusion of a grand strategy, op-ed," the New york Times, may 25, 2001 -- "In terrorem: before and after 9/11," Worlds in Collision, eds. Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 101-116 -- "The question of information technology in international relations," Millennium Journal of International Studies (vol. 32, no. 3, 2003), pp. 441-456 -- "The illusion of a grand strategy," op-ed, the New York Times, may 25, 2001. (shrink)

The dystopian tale has a special place in our shared cultural heritage. -/- Many of us will have a favourite, or perhaps several. I myself adored the 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale books as a youngster; moved on to JG Ballard then discovered Philip K. Dick thanks to Minority Report; and in recent years was floored by Black Mirror episodes and videogames such as The Last of Us. -/- The thrill can be explained by one question: ‘What if this horror (...) was actually happening?’ -/- “People say Black Mirror and The Handmaid’s Tale are conspiracies, science fiction – but as a philosopher, I can see a lot of the elements in these films and books that are actually happening now,” Marie Oldfield, AI ethics consultant to the UK government and other organisations, tells BusinessCloud. (shrink)

Many philosophical and public discussions of the ethical aspects of violent computer games typically centre on the relation between playing violent videogames and its supposed direct consequences on violent behaviour. But such an approach rests on a controversial empirical claim, is often one-sided in the range of moral theories used, and remains on a general level with its focus on content alone. In response to these problems, I pick up Matt McCormick’s thesis that potential harm from playing computer games is (...) best construed as harm to one’s character, and propose to redirect our attention to the question how violent computer games influence the moral character of players. Inspired by the work of Martha Nussbaum, I sketch a positive account of how computer games can stimulate an empathetic and cosmopolitan moral development. Moreover, rather than making a general argument applicable to a wide spectrum of media, my concern is with specific features of violent computer games that make them especially morally problematic in terms of empathy and cosmopolitanism, features that have to do with the connections between content and medium, and between virtuality and reality. I also discuss some remaining problems. In this way I hope contribute to a less polarised discussion about computer games that does justice to the complexity of their moral dimension, and to offer an account that is helpful to designers, parents, and other stakeholders. (shrink)

The third edition of the acclaimed _Routledge Companion to Aesthetics_ contains over sixty chapters written by leading international scholars covering all aspects of aesthetics. This companion opens with an historical overview of aesthetics including entries on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Goodman, and Wollheim. The second part covers the central concepts and theories of aesthetics, including the definitions of art, taste, the value of art, beauty, imagination, fiction, narrative, metaphor and pictorial representation. Part three is devoted to (...) issues and challenges in aesthetics, including art and ethics, art and religion, creativity, environmental aesthetics and feminist aesthetics. The final part addresses the individual arts, including music, photography, film, videogames, literature, theater, dance, architecture and design. With ten new entries, and revisions and updated suggestions for further reading throughout, _The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics_ is essential for anyone interested in aesthetics, art, literature, and visual studies. (shrink)

This volume investigates the role of the arts in character education. Bringing together insights from esteemed philosophers and educationalists, it looks to the arts for insight into human character and explores the arts' relationship to human flourishing and the development of the virtues. Focusing on the moral value of art and considering questions of whether there can be educational value in imaginative and non-narrative art, the nine chapters herein critically examine whether poetry, music, literature, films, television series, videogames, and even (...) gardening may improve our understanding of human character, sharpen our moral judgement, inculcate or refine certain skills required for virtue, or perhaps cultivate certain virtues themselves. Bringing together research on aesthetics, ethics, moral and character education, this book will appeal to students, researchers and academics of philosophy, arts, and education as well as philosophers of education, morality, aesthetics, and teachers of the arts. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the videogame Far Cry 2 manages to take advantage of the heroic formula so characteristic of the first-person shooter videogame genre in a way that potentially prompts players to reflect on the ethical adequacy of their own decision to immerse themselves in a fictional scenario in which they take the role of a fictional character whose behaviour primarily, if not exclusively, consists in shooting.

The multiple-choice video game Life is Strange was described by its French developers as a metaphor for the inner conflicts experienced by a teenager in trying to become an adult. In psychological work with adolescents, there is a stark similarity between what they experience and some concepts of existentialist philosophy. Sartre’s script for the movie Les Jeux Sont Faits (literally ‘‘games are made’’) uses the same narrative strategy as Life is Strange—the capacity for the main characters to travel back in (...) time to change their own existence—in order to stimulate philosophical, ethical, and political thinking and also to effectively simulate existential ‘‘limit situations.’’ This article is a dialogue between Sartre’s views and Life is Strange in order to examine to what extent questions such as what is freedom? what is choice? what is autonomy and responsibility? can be interpreted anew in hybrid digital–human—‘‘anthrobotic’’—environments. (shrink)

The third edition of the acclaimed Routledge Companion to Aesthetics contains over sixty chapters written by leading international scholars covering all aspects of aesthetics. This companion opens with an historical overview of aesthetics including entries on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, Goodman, and Wollheim. The second part covers the central concepts and theories of aesthetics, including the definitions of art, taste, the value of art, beauty, imagination, fiction, narrative, metaphor and pictorial representation. Part three is devoted to (...) issues and challenges in aesthetics, including art and ethics, art and religion, creativity, environmental aesthetics and feminist aesthetics. The final part addresses the individual arts, including music, photography, film, videogames, literature, theater, dance, architecture and design. With ten new entries, and revisions and updated suggestions for further reading throughout, The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics is essential for anyone interested in aesthetics, art, literature, and visual studies. (shrink)

This chapter argues there are many hints in the dialogue, plot, and physics of the first season of Westworld that the events in the show do not take place within a theme park, but rather in a virtual reality (VR) world that people "visit" to escape the "real world." The philosophical implications I draw are several. First, to be simulated is to be real: simulated worlds are every bit as real as "the real world", and simulated people (hosts) are every (...) bit as real as "real" ones. Second, failure to appreciate this equivalence is already leading us to treat our simulated creations (artificially intelligent agents, videogame characters, etc.) in the same kinds of morally deplorable ways that humans in Westworld treat theirs. (shrink)

The Paradox of Transgression in Games looks at transgressive games as an aesthetic experience, tackling how players respond to game content that shocks, disturbs, and distresses, and how contemporary video games can evoke intense emotional reactions. The book delves into the commercial success of many controversial videogames: although such games may appear shocking for the observing bystander, playing them is experienced as deeply rewarding for the player. Drawing on qualitative player studies and approaches from media aesthetics theory, the book challenges (...) the perception of games as innocent entertainment, and examines the range of emotional, moral, and intellectual experiences of players. As they explore what players consider transgressive, the authors ask whether there is something about the gameplay situation that works to mitigate the sense of transgression, stressing gameplay as an aesthetic experience. Anchoring the aesthetic game experience both in play studies as well as in aesthetic theory, this book will be an essential resource for scholars and students of game studies, aesthetics, media studies, philosophy of art, and emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise several concerns for what I call the willing endorsement view of moral responsibility in videogames. Briefly, the willing endorsement view holds that players are appropriate targets of moral judgments when their actions reflect their true, real-world selves. In the first section of the paper, I argue that core features of the willing endorsement view are widely implicitly accepted among philosophers engaging in discussions of morality in games. I then focus on a particularly clear recent version (...) of the view defended by Christopher Bartel. In the second and third sections, I raise several worries for Bartel’s version of the willing endorsement view. In the fourth section, I argue that these worries are not unique to Bartel’s view, but instead result from the view of identity implicit in the willing endorsement view. I conclude by suggesting a path forward by rejecting this view of identity. (shrink)

Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite (...) amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? (shrink)

A textbook designed for the mandatory semester ethics course at the United States Naval Academy by USNA Ethics Section, with contributions by the Distinguished Chair in Ethics.

This paper is concerned with whether there is a moral difference between simulating wrongdoing and consuming non-simulatory representations of wrongdoing. I argue that simulating wrongdoing is (as such) a pro tanto wrong whose wrongness does not tarnish other cases of consuming representations of wrongdoing. While simulating wrongdoing (as such) constitutes a disrespectful act, consuming representations of wrongdoing (as such) does not. I aim to motivate this view in part by bringing a number of intuitive moral judgements into reflective equilibrium, and (...) in part by describing the case of a character that I call The Devious Super Geek who simulates wrong to particular people that he knows personally. I build bridging cases from the case of the Devious Super Geek to capture games in which one simulates wrong to imaginary members of extant, morally salient categories. The surprising conclusions that we are led to include not just that simulated wrongdoing is pro tanto wrong, but that simulated Just killing is pro tanto wrong, and also that the simulated killing of zombies and aliens is also pro tanto wrong. Finally, I describe how I propose to handle some potential objections and attempt to weigh the pro tanto wrong identified in the paper against some countervailing considerations in some all things considered judgements. (shrink)

The new business opportunities and prospects emerging in Europe within the Common Market and other Western and European countries also raise important ethical challenges. This work comprises a collection of ethical insights to enhance the conduct of business in an evolving Europe.

This book is a comprehensive and unique text and reference in medical ethics. By far the most inclusive set of primary documents and articles in the field ever published, it contains over 100 selections. Virtually all pieces appear in their entirety, and a significant number would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The volume draws upon the literature of history, medicine, philosophical and religious ethics, economics, and sociology. A wide range of topics and issues are covered, such as law (...) and medicine, truth-telling by the physician, research, population policy, genetics, abortion, dying, and individual rights in medical care. The selections span the centuries, beginning with material from the works of Hippocrates, continuing through Thomas Percival, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard, down to modern commentators like Henry K. Beecher, Walsh McDermott, David L. Bazelon, Paul Freund, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Paul Ramsey, Richard McCormick, Rashi Fein, and Bernard Barber. The text has eight major divisions, beginning with sections on the ethical dimensions of the physician-patient relationship in history; the moral bases of medical ethics; and regulation, compulsion, and protection of the consumer in clinical medicine and public health. Each of these sections includes key essays that appear for the first time. All of the book's major divisions contain primary documents: codes such as the Hippocratic Oath, Medieval Law for the Regulation of Medicine, and the first as well as the most recent code of the American Medical Association; court decisions, including those on Karen Quinlan and on abortion in the United States and West Germany; government documents such as the statement of the National Commission on the Protection of Human Subjects, the Tuskegee Syphilis Report, the British Parliamentary debate on euthanasia, and the Council of Europe on rights of the sick and dying; and various published guidelines such as the Harvard Medical School brain death criteria, the American Hospital Association on patient's rights, and Pope Pius XII on the prolongation of life. Cases that illustrate moral dilemmas are provided for discussion purposes. Each section is preceded by a succinct editor's introduction. The documents and essays are of practical value for practitioners and students in medicine, law, ethics, and counselling, and for individual patients and groups concerned with medical care. Through encompassing divergent viewpoints, the essays and primary documents were selected to encourage humane practices and deepen understanding of the multiple traditions that shaped and do shape the development of medicine. (shrink)

The "ethics of imagination" or the "ethics of fantasy" encompasses the various ways in which we can morally evaluate the imagination. This topic covers a range of different kinds of imagination: (1) fantasizing, (2) engaging with fictions, and (3) dreaming. The clearest, live ethical question concerns the moral value of taking pleasure in undeserved suffering, whether willfully imagined, represented, or dreamed. Much of this entry concerns general theoretical considerations and how they relate to the ethics of fantasy. (...) In the final sections I walk through the three types of imagination and point out some of the open questions concerning each type. (shrink)

Linda Treviño and Kate Nelson bring together a mix of theory and practice in Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right 6th Edition. In this new edition, the dynamic author team of Linda Treviño, prolific researcher and Distinguished Professor, and Kate Nelson, Professor and longtime practitioner of strategic organizational communications and human resources, equip students with the pragmatic knowledge they need to identify and solve ethical dilemmas, understand their own and others’ ethical behavior, and promote (...) ethical behavior in their organization. Managing Business Ethics is the perfect text to prepare students for a range of roles in the business world— managers across business functions, communications professionals, compliance officers, corporate counsels, human resources managers, and senior executives. (shrink)

This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé’s assertion that the untimely ‘extinction of populations and species is bad’. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns why – or when – anthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not (...) be the case (i.e. which extinctions are even desirable). After providing an explanation of the disciplinary perspective taken (section “Introduction”), the concept of extinction and its history within that literature are introduced (section “Understanding extinction”). Then, in section “Why (or when) might anthropogenic extinctions be morally problematic?”, different reasons for why anthropogenic extinctions might be morally problematic are presented based on the loss of species’ value, harm to nonhuman individuals, the loss of valuable biological variety and duties to future generations. This section concludes by also considering cases where anthropogenic extinctions might be justified. Section “How to respond to extinctions?” then addresses a selection of topics concerning risks and de-extinction technologies. Finally, the section on “Extinction studies” introduces other viewpoints on the ethics of extinction from the extinction studies literature, followed by the “Conclusion”. (shrink)

Drawing heavily on recent empirical research to update R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism and expand Hare's treatment of "intuitive level rules," Gary Varner considers in detail the theory's application to animals while arguing that Hare should have recognized a hierarchy of persons, near-persons, & the merely sentient.

This book provides essential reading for anyone with an academic or professional interest in business ethics today.

Rethinking Feminist Ethics bridges the gap between women theorists disenchanted with aspects of traditional theories that insist upon the need for some ethical principles. The book raises the question of whether the female conception of ethics based on care, trust and empathy can provide a realistic alternative to the male ethics based on duty and rule bound conception of ethics developed from Kant, Mill and Rawls. Koehn concludes that it cannot, showing how problems for respect of (...) the individual arise also in female ethics because it privileges the caregiver over the cared for. Drawing on Socrates' Crito , she shows how an ethic of dialogue can instill a critical respect for the view of the other and the ethical principles absent from the female ethic. (shrink)