A Kantian response to the Gamer's Dilemma
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Abstract
The Gamer’s Dilemma consists of three intuitively plausible but conficting assertions: (i) Virtual murder is morally permis sible. (ii) Virtual child molestation is morally forbidden. (iii) There is no relevant moral diference between virtual murder
and virtual child molestation in computer games. Numerous attempts to resolve (or dissolve) the Gamer’s Dilemma line
the feld 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 difculties 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 justifcations.
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Ethics and information technology, 25, 3, Springer Science + Business Media B.V, Dordrecht u.a., 2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-023-09710-0