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  1. The “digital animal intuition:” the ethics of violence against animals in video games.Simon Coghlan & Lucy Sparrow - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):215-224.
    Video game players sometimes give voice to an “intuition” that violently harming nonhuman animals in video games is particularly ethically troubling. However, the moral issue of violence against nonhuman animals in video games has received scant philosophical attention, especially compared to the ethics of violence against humans in video games. This paper argues that the seemingly counterintuitive belief that digital animal violence is in general more ethically problematic than digital human violence is likely to be correct. Much video game violence (...)
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  • Information technology and moral values.John Sullins - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    A encyclopedia entry on the moral impacts that happen when information technologies are used to record, communicate and organize information. including the moral challenges of information technology, specific moral and cultural challenges such as online games, virtual worlds, malware, the technology transparency paradox, ethical issues in AI and robotics, and the acceleration of change in technologies. It concludes with a look at information technology as a model for moral change, moral systems and moral agents.
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  • 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.
    Historically, video games featuring content perceived as excessively violent have drawn moral criticism from an indignant (and sometimes, morally outraged) public. Defenders of violent video games have insisted that such criticisms are unwarranted, as committing acts of virtual violence against computer-controlled characters – no matter how heinous or cruel those actions would be if performed in real life – harm no actual people. In this paper, I present and critically analyze key aspects of this debate. I argue that while many (...)
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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.Garry Young - 2013 - Ethics and Information Technology 15 (1):13-23.
    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, (...)
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  • The banality of simulated evil: Designing ethical gameplay. [REVIEW]Miguel Sicart - 2009 - Ethics and Information Technology 11 (3):191-202.
    This paper offers an analytical description of the ethics of game design and its influence in the ethical challenges computer games present. The paper proposes a set of game design suggestions based on the Information Ethics concept of Levels of Abstraction which can be applied to formalise ethical challenges into gameplay mechanics; thus allowing game designers to incorporate ethics as part of the experience of their games. The goal of this paper is twofold: to address some of the reasons why (...)
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  • The incorrigible social meaning of video game imagery.Stephanie Patridge - 2010 - Ethics and Information Technology 13 (4):303-312.
    In this paper, I consider a particular amoralist challenge against those who would morally criticize our single-player video play, viz., “come on, it’s only a game!” The amoralist challenge with which I engage gains strength from two facts: the activities to which the amoralist lays claim are only those that do not involve interactions with other rational or sentient creatures, and the amoralist concedes that there may be extrinsic, consequentialist considerations that support legitimate moral criticisms. I argue that the amoralist (...)
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  • Virtual plagues and real-world pandemics: reflecting on the potential for online computer role-playing games to inform real world epidemic research.Stuart Oultram - 2013 - Medical Humanities 39 (2):115-118.
    In the wake of the Corrupted Blood incident, which afflicted the massively multiplayer online computer role-playing game World of Warcraft in 2005, it has been suggested that both, the incident itself and massively multiplayer online computer role-playing games in general, can be utilised to inform and assist real-world epidemic and public health research. In this paper, I engage critically with these claims.
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  • The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation.Sebastian Ostritsch - 2017 - Ethics and Information Technology 19 (2):117-128.
    According to the amoralist, computer games cannot be subject to moral evaluation because morality applies to reality only, and games are not real but “just games”. This challenges our everyday moralist intuition that some games are to be met with moral criticism. I discuss and reject the two most common answers to the amoralist challenge and argue that the amoralist is right in claiming that there is nothing intrinsically wrong in simply playing a game. I go on to argue for (...)
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  • Virtual action.Jan-Hendrik Heinrichs - 2020 - Ethics and Information Technology 23 (3):317-330.
    In the debate about actions in virtual environments two interdependent types of question have been pondered: What is a person doing who acts in a virtual environment? Second, can virtual actions be evaluated morally? These questions have been discussed using examples from morally dubious computer games, which seem to revel in atrocities. The examples were introduced using the terminology of “virtual murder” “virtual rape” and “virtual pedophilia”. The terminological choice had a lasting impact on the debate, on the way action (...)
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  • Robots, rape, and representation.Robert Sparrow - 2017 - International Journal of Social Robotics 9 (4):465-477.
    Sex robots are likely to play an important role in shaping public understandings of sex and of relations between the sexes in the future. This paper contributes to the larger project of understanding how they will do so by examining the ethics of the “rape” of robots. I argue that the design of realistic female robots that could explicitly refuse consent to sex in order to facilitate rape fantasy would be unethical because sex with robots in these circumstances is a (...)
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  • Are you (relevantly) experienced? A moral argument for video games.Amanda Cawston & Nathan Wildman - forthcoming - In Aidan Thompson, Laura D'Olimpio & Panos Paris (eds.), Educating Character Through the Arts. London: Routledge.
    Many have offered moral objections to video games, with various critics contending that they depict and promote morally dubious attitudes and behaviour. However, few have offered moral arguments in favour of video games. In this chapter, we develop one such positive moral argument. Specifically, we argue that video games offer one of the only morally acceptable methods for acquiring some ethical knowledge. Consequently, we have (defeasible) moral reasons for creating, distributing, and playing certain morally educating video games.
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