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Enacting taboos as a means to an end; but what end? On the morality of motivations for child murder and paedophilia within gamespace

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Abstract

Video games are currently available which permit the virtual murder of children. No such games are presently available which permit virtual paedophilia. Does this disparity reflect a morally justifiable position? Focusing solely on different player motivations, I contrast two version of a fictitious game—one permitting the virtual murder of children, the other virtual paedophilia—in order to establish whether the selective prohibition of one activity over the other can be morally justified based on player motivation alone. I conclude that it cannot, for reasons discussed.

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Notes

  1. See Goldman’s (2010) news article on the rejected artwork for those labelled “Childkiller” in Fallout 2: notably, a cartoon drawing of ‘Vault Boy’ kicking a pregnant women in her stomach.

  2. See Young and Whitty (2010, 2011, 2012) and Young (2013) for a more detailed discussion on taboos in video games.

  3. The gamer’s dilemma results from the seeming fact that arguments for the moral permissibility of virtual violence, including murder (which many gamers would endorse), also allow the permissibility of virtual paedophilia (which many of these same gamers would not).

  4. Bartel argues that the gamer’s dilemma (in which arguments supporting the permissibility of virtual murder also support the permissibility of virtual paedophilia) can be resolved if one holds that virtual paedophilia is an example of child pornography. In this way, one can differentiate between virtual child murder and virtual paedophilia because, by equating the latter with child pornography, it is morally and legally prohibited. Bartel does acknowledge, however, that virtual paedophilia does not involve actual children. To defend the impermissibility of virtual paedophilia, Bartel borrows from Levy (2002) and argues that virtual paedophilia constitutes the eroticization of inequality. In the case of children, this cannot be avoided as there is inherent inequality in any adult child relationship. What Levy, and therefore Bartel, argue is that the inequality in this form of pornography also reinforces the inequality and subordination of women (as evidenced in adult heterosexual pornography). Even if this is the case, it seems counter-intuitive to hold that virtual child pornography, and therefore the paedophilic activity within the fictitious Will of the Gods is morally wrong because it reinforces the inequality and subordination of women. Moreover, with regard to the aim of my paper, Bartel’s argument focuses more on the representative status of the virtual content (which I am not concerned with here) and not on player motivation (which I am).

  5. It is possible that a gamer endorses M(strategic) not because they consider what they do to be amoral but because, to put it simply, they do not care whether it is moral or not, or are motivated to win the game to the extent that they are prepared to engage in what they otherwise hold to be immoral activities. This possibility does not preclude the gamer who adopts the amoralist stance. It is this gamer that I am interested in with regard to M(strategic).

  6. Here we see the manifestation of the gamer’s dilemma discussed by Luck (2009).

  7. Levy (2002) discusses how in 2002 the US Supreme Court ruled that the 1996 Child Pornography Protection Act was unconstitutional. Relevant to this discussion, under this ruling, computer generated sexually explicit images of children were permitted. However, in 2003, the PROTECT Act (Section 1466) limited the permissibility of virtual child pornography by prohibiting obscene material (obscenity is based on contemporary community standards). I thank the anonymous reviewer for helping me clarify this point.

  8. I accept that engaging in the activity as a means of winning the game may also be fun, as noted earlier.

  9. As noted earlier, one could argue that irrespective of one’s motivation for engaging in a particular virtual activity—whether it is for pragmatic (game strategy) reasons or for personal exploration or just for the fun of it, a priori, what the enactment represents is still morally wrong because of what it represents. While acknowledging this moral position, to reiterate my earlier point, I have discussed this a priori argument previously, and so wish to focus here on differing motivations only.

  10. I ask this question in the knowledge that the homogeneity of STAs is nominal—insofar as they represent real-world taboos which themselves are nominally grouped together here based simply on the fact that they are taboos.

  11. One could argue that even with advances in technology equivalent to the science fiction holodeck simulation, one is still aware that the interaction is virtual. Consequently, the level of arousal may still be arguable different (see Young, 2010 for discussion on virtually elicited emotion).

  12. I am not saying that all murderers desire simply to commit murder; rather, those engaged in premeditated murder, have decided on this course of action, and so desire it in this sense.

  13. Barely legal pornography uses models who are over 18 years of age, but who are depicted as being under or just over the legal age of consent.

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Correspondence to Garry Young.

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Young, G. Enacting taboos as a means to an end; but what end? On the morality of motivations for child murder and paedophilia within gamespace. Ethics Inf Technol 15, 13–23 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-012-9306-x

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