Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: playing with right and wrong
- 2 To prohibit or not to prohibit, that is the question
- 3 Hume's strength of feeling
- 4 Kant's call of duty
- 5 The cost and benefit of virtual violence (and other taboos)
- 6 Are meanings virtually the same?
- 7 There are wrongs and then there are wrongs
- 8 Virtual virtues, virtual vices
- 9 Doing what it takes to win
- 10 Agreeing the rules
- 11 Why would anyone want to do that?
- 12 Coping with virtual taboos
- 13 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Coping with virtual taboos
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: playing with right and wrong
- 2 To prohibit or not to prohibit, that is the question
- 3 Hume's strength of feeling
- 4 Kant's call of duty
- 5 The cost and benefit of virtual violence (and other taboos)
- 6 Are meanings virtually the same?
- 7 There are wrongs and then there are wrongs
- 8 Virtual virtues, virtual vices
- 9 Doing what it takes to win
- 10 Agreeing the rules
- 11 Why would anyone want to do that?
- 12 Coping with virtual taboos
- 13 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In play, although one really plays, in an important sense what one does is also hypothetical: for “what one discovers (if one does) is what it is like to play at being X; one does not become X – necessarily”.
(Howe 2008: 570, original emphasis)This chapter is concerned not with the morality of STAs but with their psychological impact. How do we cope, psychologically, with the moral freedoms afforded by acts of play, particularly those involving STAs? When we play at X (to borrow Howe's phrase), where X involves some form of STA, how do we manage the reality of this hypothetical? Put another way: how do I cope with the fact that I am enacting this taboo, be it assault, murder, torture, rape or paedophilia? In addition, how do we manage the transition across spaces with potentially different, perhaps incommensurate, moral freedoms; in other words, with the fact that we are able to move in and out of realms in which what is permitted to be done and, importantly, what I do can be radically different?
In playing at being X, Howe holds the intuitive view that we do not become X, necessarily; however, there is also a sense in which the possibility of becoming X is not negated by the fact that what one does, initially at least, is merely play at being X. In not negating this possibility, one is left to consider who might be more vulnerable to becoming X, through the act of play, where becoming X involves being the sort of person who would enjoy the activities represented by STAs: namely, POTAs.
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- Ethics in the Virtual WorldThe Morality and Psychology of Gaming, pp. 139 - 154Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013