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Virtual worlds and moral evaluation
Ethics and Information Technology 14 (4):255-265 (2012)
Abstract
Consider the multi-user virtual worlds of online games such as EVE and World of Warcraft, or the multi-user virtual world of Second Life. Suppose a player performs an action in one of these worlds, via his or her virtual character, which would be wrong, if the virtual world were real. What is the moral status of this virtual action? In this paper I consider arguments for and against the Asymmetry Thesis: the thesis that such virtual actions are never wrong. I also explain how the truth of the Asymmetry Thesis is closely aligned with the possibility of what Edward Castronova has called closed synthetic worlds. With some qualifications, the ultimate conclusion is that the Asymmetry Thesis is false and that these closed worlds are impossibleAuthor's Profile
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Citations of this work
Free will and moral responsibility in video games.Christopher Bartel - 2015 - Ethics and Information Technology 17 (4):285-293.
Video Games and Ethics.Monique Wonderly - 2017 - In Joseph C. Pitt & Ashley Shew (eds.), Spaces for the Future: A Companion to Philosophy of Technology. New York: Routledge. pp. 29-41.
Getting away with murder: why virtual murder in MMORPGs can be wrong on Kantian grounds.Helen Ryland - 2019 - Ethics and Information Technology (2).
The conceptual exportation question: conceptual engineering and the normativity of virtual worlds.Thomas Montefiore & Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky - 2024 - Ethics and Information Technology 26 (1):1-13.
References found in this work
Ideal code, real world: a rule-consequentialist theory of morality.Brad Hooker - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations.Barrie Paskins & Michael Walzer - 1981 - Philosophical Quarterly 31 (124):285.
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations.Michael Walzer - 1979 - Science and Society 43 (2):247-249.
A Theory of the Good and the Right.Richard B. Brandt - 1979 - Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 35 (2):307-310.
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