Virtual morality

1. Plato vs Aristotle (PC, PlayStation, Xbox)
2. Dual wielding morality
3. Normalization and the hyperreality of morality
4. Second Life, second thoughts?

Recommended Readings/Viewings

• Goguen, Stacey (2009) "Dual Wielding Morality: World of Warcraft and the Ethics of Ganking" Paper delivered at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Oslo, 2009.
• Jacob Geller, "Does Call of Duty believe in anything?"

Key concepts, people, etc

• Plato and Aristotle
  Ancient Greek philosophers, often (cartoonishly) used to represent two different attitudes to the arts
  Plato: they are misleading lies and take our attention away from more important things; they lead us to be immoral
  Aristotle: they are useful as catharsis, a steam-valve for our strong emotions to be released in a safe way
• Catharsis
  The effect whereby an individual can release their strong emotions (fear, anger, lust, etc) in a safe vicarious way, through watching drama (eg, a horror film or a romantic comedy) or now by playing a video game
• Ganking
  In a video game, using underhanded means to kill opponents
• Dual wielding moral action
  As argued by Stacey Goguen, the situation we are in when we are interacting in a fictional virtual world, through an avatar and with other avatars, and at the same time we are a real person interacting with the real people behind the other avatars; thus we "wield" two separate moralities in two separate moral spheres (game morality and real-world morality); these may come into conflict with each other and bleed into one another
• Normalization
  The process whereby moral values become standardized or acceptable in a society through how they are represented in culture; for instance, as more homosexual couples have appeared in tv shows, homosexual couples have become more normalized in society; on a more negative, note, however, as criminality is normalized in many Netflix series, for example, criminality also becomes more normalized in the minds of society

References

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