Is It Wrong to Play Violent Video Games?
This article appears:
"Is It Wrong to Play Violent Video Games?," Ethics and Information Technology. Volume 3, No. 4, 2001.
Pre-print copy: copyright Matt McCormick, 2016.
IS IT WRONG TO PLAY VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES?
I.Introduction.
Recent developments have increased many people's concerns about violent computer games. With the surge in sales of affordable home computers that have increasing amounts of processing power and improved graphic performance, a rapidly increasing number of people are playing computer games. Over half of U.S. homes now have personal computers, and that number is rapidly rising.[1]Computer game sales and sales of video game consoles like the Sony Playstation and Dreamcast have skyrocketed. Along with this rapid increase in the number of people playing games there have been improvements in the graphic quality, sophistication, and creativity of the games themselves.
One segment of the game market has always been devoted to violent games in which the player pits him or herself in battle against other players, monsters, or characters. Enabled by rapidly improving technology, the game makers have made some of these games increasingly graphic in their portrayals of torture, assault, murder, and other acts of violence. Whereas shooting an opponent from a distance would have once resulted only in the collapse of his or her body, now the shot is accompanied by screams of pain, realistic writhing, blood, specific damage to a part of the body, flying body parts, and death. Players are equipped with mines, grenades, plasma guns, machine guns, rail guns, sniper rifles, flame throwers, energy weapons, and so on to accomplish these ends, with each weapon inflicting its own characteristic kind of graphic damage. Players have clamored for faster paced games and more powerful weapons, so that not only have the kills gotten more graphic but there are more of them as well.
With the increase in the number of people playing these games and the graphicness of portrayals of violence, it is not surprising then that some people have expressed concerns that there is perhaps something morally objectionable about playing violent video games. They reason that the exposure to so much simulated violence and death desensitizes the player to real violence and death. And the player's exposure to and perpetration of simulated violence will make it easier in the end for those people to commit real violence. Violent video games are frequently mentioned, sometimes in the same breath, with news reports or discussions about mass murders, particularly those committed by high school students. It is not difficult to feel some sympathy with the critics' point. It is hard to imagine how a person can frequently participate in brutal, graphic, and realistic acts of simulated violence and not be affected in some morally relevant sense. Studies of children have shown that they are less likely to seek adult help concerning real-life violence and they will witness a higher level of real-life violence after viewing violence on television.[2]Among adults, physiological responses to real violence are reduced after viewing violent television.[3]So it is hard to imagine that there would be no adverse effects to playing games where one is not merely passively observing violence committed by others, but the player is actually pulling the joystick trigger and inflicting simulated harm themselves. Common sense dictates that playing such games makes committing real violence easier, however slightly. And common sense also dictates that aside from the harm a person might do to others, playing violent computer games of this sort must have a negative effect on his or her moral character.
On the other side of the debate, one might argue that merely playing a game, however realistic, is not morally objectionable simply because it is fake. Real humans are what matter in the moral assessment of one's actions; real harm happens between real people and in video games there are neither. Acting like you are hurting someone is not actually hurting someone. Simulating an act that is morally objectionable is not itself morally objectionable, or else we would have to conclude that an actor in a play or movie playing the part of Hitler or a serial killer is himself doing something morally objectionable.
So the questions before us are: is participating in simulated violence even where there is no victim itself somehow morally objectionable? Is there anything wrong with going through the motions of an immoral act, and if so what is it?
The best answer to these questions requires that we consider the contribution of all three of the major moral theories--utilitarianism, deontological ethics, and virtue ethics. Each theory sheds some light on what might be wrong with such activities and they help to clarify the issues involved significantly. By sketching out the theoretical approach available to each position it becomes clear whose interests are relevant, what kinds of harm there might be, and what morally salient features of the problem we should focus on. I will argue that neither the utilitarian, nor the Kantian can produce compelling reasons to object to authentic simulations of violence or immoral activity. Nor can they capture our common sense moral intuitions about the matter. One important result of the utilitarian and Kantian analyses is that it becomes clear that whatever might be wrong with playing violent video games, or more broadly, participating in simulated immoral acts, it has nothing to do with the impact of people other than the player. But Aristotle's account of moral character, which focuses on the development of virtue through one's actions, gives a natural and intuitive explanation of why these activities seem morally objectionable.
II.The Utilitarian Response to Violent Video Games
The most common kind of objection to violent video games seems to have utilitarian or consequentialist grounds. When people shake their heads upon hearing the news about the most recent high school shooting rampage and mention the unfortunate influence of violent video games, their objection is that the video games have contributed to the conditions that produced this tragic outcome. That is, many people believe that violent video games make it more likely, even if only by a small amount, that people will commit harmful acts against others. Let us explore the relationship between simulated acts and real acts further.
First, to understand how simulated acts might affect us, we can make this threefold distinction: A dangerous act is an act that increases the risk of harm to either the person who engages in the act or someone else who is endangered by the actor. So not surprisingly, when someone goes skydiving, she engages in a dangerous act (at least it is more dangerous than many other activities.)And when someone drives recklessly on a winding, two lane road at night, that person puts themselves at danger and anyone else in the car or in the oncoming lane.
Let us define a harmful act as an act that inflicts some damage on someone, the actor or someone else. Harmful acts may or may not arise from dangerous acts. Playing Russian roulette is a dangerous act, and if the chamber with the bullet aligns with the hammer, it becomes a harmful act as well. Eating a hamburger is not a particularly dangerous act, but if one chokes on it, the act becomes a harmful one.
Risk increasing acts are acts that make a person more likely to commit a dangerous or harmful act. A person who has three martinis at a party and gets in their car and drives home puts others on the road at risk of harm. Getting mildly drunk itself is not particularly dangerous, provided that one does not drink enormous amounts and that the health risks of doing it only rarely are negligible, nor does the act of getting drunk itself directly endanger others. But getting drunk does make it more likely that when you do other things, harm or danger will result. In fact, even having a single glass of wine at dinner is an act that increases the risk, if only slightly, that one will do harm to someone else.
Now we are in a better position to analyze violent video games and simulated immoral acts from the utilitarian perspective. It should be clear that under normal circumstances, playing a violent video game is not itself a dangerous act. That is, with a few exceptions, the gamer undertakes no more risks by sitting in front of the television or the computer screen than a non-gamer would.
Playing violent video games themselves are not harmful either, as far as we know. While it could turn out that the sort of arousal of playing games or some other fact about them is discovered to cause harm to humans, we do not have any compelling evidence that playing the games itself is more harmful than watching television or operating a computer.
The worry or complaint that many people have about participating in authentic simulations of immoral acts, or playing violent video games, is that doing so is a risk increasing act. To say that violent video games play a causal role in some real acts of violence is to say at least that by playing them a person increases the likelihood that they will commit violence or do harm to themselves or others. And while not all risk increasing acts are morally objectionable (driving a car, we are told, increases one's risks more than flying in a plane), some of them, either because they increase the risks (particularly to others) so much, or because the benefits gained by the addition of risk are outweighed, ought to be avoided.
According to Utilitarian theories of ethics, an act is good insofar as it promotes benefit to people overall and it is bad to the extent that it causes harm to people overall. So with the above distinctions in mind, the utilitarian might be able to argue that violent video games are morally objectionable because playing them is unacceptably risk increasing. What can the utilitarian say about anticipated bad consequences in a case like this? Rule utilitarianism and act utilitarianism give different answers. The rule utilitarian need not wait for the results of an act in order to make some determination about its moral status. If it can be established with reasonable certainty that an act of a certain type increases the risk of harm on the whole, even if not every act of that sort actually results in harm, and that risk is not outweighed by overall benefits, then the utilitarian can be critical of that act to an extent that is proportional to the amount of risk increase. So to keep the cases simple, the utilitarian can condemn a game of Russian roulette, even if the players manage to play without getting the chamber with the bullet.
The act utilitarian has some more latitude in determining whether or not individual acts are morally objectionable. Whereas the rule utilitarian might have decided that generally speaking acts of a certain type rarely generate enough overall benefit to make them acceptable, the act utilitarian may take individual variations in the situation into account that might make an isolated act acceptable while many others similar to it are not.
Merely increasing the risk of harm cannot be the utilitarian's only consideration, however. If playing the games is a risk increasing act, then it may also turn out that on the whole, they cause more harm to people than benefit. If empirical studies of game playing reveal that players are more likely to do harm to others as a result of playing games, there might be utilitarian grounds on which to object to them. I say "might" because it is not enough to point out that an act is risk increasing to show that it is morally objectionable on a utilitarian account. The act has to cause (or risk causing) more harm than benefit overall. There is the additional complication of uncertainty regarding outcomes. The possibility of danger or harm resulting must be weighed against the likelihood of benefit that will result. A small increase of risk may be worth a substantial increase in certain benefit, but a huge increase in risk may not be worth an unlikely beneficial result. If someone unnecessarily undertakes a risk increasing act with no overall benefit to be gained, or the benefits to be gained do not outweigh the costs, or if the benefits are too unlikely to justify the increase in risk, then the utilitarian has grounds on which to condemn that act as immoral. For example, there is some risk associated with undergoing surgery due to complications, mistakes, infection, and so on, but if the likelihood that one's life will be saved by the surgery far outweighs the likelihood that one of these unfortunate outcomes will result, then the surgery is a risk increasing act that is not morally objectionable.
Suppose then that the often alleged empirical claim that playing violent video games increases the likelihood that players will commit harm to others is true. Note that the public debate about violent movies, television, and video games has focused largely around this issue. But showing that risk is increased by an activity is a far cry from showing that the activity is morally objectionable. Our lives are filled with risk increasing acts that we regularly accept because of the greater benefits to be derived from them. Driving to the grocery store is more risky, than staying at home, but we consider the advantages of having groceries substantial enough to justify its if it is true that violent movies, television, and video games are risk increasing acts, the defenders of television, movies, and game have not lost the debate (at least from the utilitarian perspective).Risk increase is just one factor that goes into the calculation of overall benefit or harm. If the advantages overall still justify that increase in risk, the activities can be defended on utilitarian grounds.
So what does the utilitarian need to support the stronger claim that playing the games is morally objectionable. The utilitarian needs to demonstrate that the increased risk of harm resulting from playing the games outweighs the benefits and the likelihood of benefits derived from playing them. Attempts to clearly articulate all of the relevant factors in such a cost/benefit analysis are notoriously difficult, but we can raise a few decisive considerations. There are millions of people playing violent video games with the numbers growing every year. These people are playing the games for a reason. One of the first things players will point out in these discussions is that the games are fun. The recreational and entertainment value of playing is very high to players. Furthermore, the money that the players spend on the games and on computer equipment is helping to fuel a huge expansion in technology that has and will continue to have a variety of other benefits. Airlines, police departments, and the military are all using video game technology to train and become proficient at tasks that are too risky to practice otherwise.(Of course, someone might well argue that military proficiency derived from video game technology should be considered a cost rather than a benefit given its results.)
The video game player might even respond that these justifications for the value of the games are not needed. Consider the high risks associated with playing football, a sport that is clearly much more popular and much more harmful, dangerous, and risk increasing than video games. Injury and even death results from playing football on the professional, amateur, collegiate, and recreational level on a surprisingly regular. These risks are gladly accepted by the players (and the fans) in exchange for what is to be gained by playing. But the players are not the only ones at risk. Emergency room admissions for battered wives and girlfriends increase significantly on Super Bowl Sunday. Riots, fights, assaults, and other violence between fans have become so common place in football stadiums that San Francisco Giants games require over 150 police to maintain order. British soccer matches, to point out another example, are notorious for erupting into huge riots between fans that result in hundreds of injuries and deaths. On June 19, 2000 after the Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers in an NBA finals game, hundreds of Laker fans became violent, smashed windows, burned cars, destroyed stores. Rioters destroyed property in 35 different locations. Stuart Fischoff, a professor of media psychology at California State University, Los Angeles said, "It's the level of arousal that is the key factor. Everyone gets caught up in the maelstrom." [4] Notice that these incidents are quite common. They happen every year surrounding our sporting events. But the possibility that there is something morally objectionable about football, soccer, or basketball is hardly considered. Typically the response to prevent the violence is to increase security and try to deter people from acting on the impulses that are stimulated by the sports events.
It should be clear that the harm, danger, and risk associated with playing these other sports vastly exceed the risks that may turn out to be associated with playing violent video games. No video game player ever broke her neck playing Quake III, fractured a leg when Laura Croft jumped off a large building, or ended up in a wheel chair after a virtual high speed car wreck. Nor is any spectator, watching a video game player from the couch in front of the television, in danger of being crushed in riot, beaten up by fans of the opposing side, or victimized by looting and fires. While children may get in a fight over who gets to play the Nintendo game next, neither they nor anyone who is watching their game faces the risk, harm, or danger associated with many sporting events.
Now we are in a position to summarize the utilitarian's approach to the violent video game issue. It does not appear that the utilitarian can or will have any substantial grounds on which to morally criticize playing violent video games. They are faced by two substantial hurdles. First, the utilitarian needs to demonstrate that violent video games are risk increasing activities. Carefully controlled empirical studies can identify the causal link, if there is one, between playing the games and doing harm to oneself or others. These studies should also reveal important facts about how much playing is connected with how much harm or tendency to do harm. Second, if utilitarians wish to argue that violent video games are morally objectionable with the results of these studies in hand, they need to argue that the overall increased likelihood to do harm outweighs the benefits derived from the activity. And it is this second hurdle that I believe the utilitarian will have the most trouble getting over. In general, our society's threshold for acceptable risk is very high for recreational activities. With little more justification than fun or entertainment, we skydive, hang glide, scuba dive, rock climb, play football, back pack, bungee jump, and so on, despite the fact that there are rather substantial risks of harm to oneself and others associated with these activities. At the very least, gamers are having a great deal of fun playing violent games, so the utilitarians who would object to them will have to rethink their attitude towards many of our risky activities, or argue that violent video games are significantly different in kind. Empirical studies of the issue may prove me wrong, but I have strong doubts that the critic of violent video games will succeed in surmounting this second hurdle.
So far, the sort of utilitarian analysis we have considered has been a fairly straight-forward cost, benefit, and risk assessment. The view we have considered is rather like Jeremy Bentham's that pains and pleasures, with some calculating and translating, can be compared and summed directly. But it should be pointed out that the utilitarian position and their objection to violent video games may not be as simple as this. John Stuart Mill is famous for diverging from Bentham on just this point about the comparison of pleasures. According to Mill, there are different, higher and lower, capacities for pleasure and pain, and that there are some higher pleasures and capacities that are more valuable than the lower ones. Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures gives the utilitarian another possible objection to violent video games. According to Mill, the ability to experience pleasure and pain is commensurate with the sophistication level of one's mind and the kind of capacities one possesses. So a human's pleasure and pain are not the same as those of a fish. Furthermore, these capacities in humans can be lost or refined and developed, depending upon the sort of treatment a person gets. As a result, Mill remarks that the,
"capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise."[5]
We can anticipate, therefore, that the utilitarian might take up Mill's distinction and argue that video games, because the wanton destruction, lawlessness, and violence appeal to our lesser, base impulses, could cause a person's capacities for higher pleasures and goods to atrophy. But this objection is weakened by the rejoinder we considered earlier. At best, this sort of objection is arguing for moderation, balance, and an equal development of human talents. If we take it as a blanket condemnation of the so-called lesser pleasures, video games are just one of a long list of activities that we will be forced to avoid. And as we said before, a plausible moral theory should accommodate activities like sports, games, and recreation to a reasonable extent.
III.The Kantian's Response to Violent Video Games
What about deontological or Kantian theories of ethics? Can they produce plausible reasons for arguing that playing violent video games is morally objectionable?
Deontological theories of ethics judge the rightness of wrongness of acts according to their conformity with duty. Kant gives two characterizations of duty that are relevant to this discussion. The first formulation of Kant's categorical imperative is that you should, "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only." [6]Kant also expresses the highest statement of our moral duty in terms of universality: "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."[7]
The problem with violence against people is easily identifiable with reference to the first statement of the Categorical Imperative. If a person commits unjustified violence against another person, she is failing to treat that person as an end in herself. If we disregard their value as rational and autonomous agents, then we treat them as mere means to an end. And committing violence against someone is possibly the worst way to reduce them to a mere object or means status.
Can the Kantian argue that by playing violent video games we treat people as mere means to an end, thus violating this version of the Categorical Imperative? To answer the question, it should be noted that there are video games that involve other people and there are games that do not. In some video games a player pits herself against automated opponents. The game is programmed to provide monsters, characters, or opponents that the player fights or competes against. In these cases, the person who plays is not treating any other people as mere means to an end because there are no other people involved. We will address the possibility of mistreating other non-players as a result of playing against the programming shortly.
A rapidly increasing portion of the video game market is for games that allow play between people. Console games that attach to a television set and allow multiple people to play, or computer games that network different players over the Internet, pit people against people. So there is the potential for violations of one's moral duty to other people as ends in themselves in these cases. What sort of behavior in these games would constitute a violation of one's duty to others? The example of other types of games we play sheds some light on the Kantian case as it did with utilitarianism. The Kantian argument gives us a way to identify a phenomena that we are all familiar with, the person who is a "bad sport."
A person who wins a game is a "bad sport" when she gloats, or demeans or insults her opponents, or when she is otherwise disrespectful. A person who loses a fair game is a bad sport when she is resentful of the winners for the loss, angry or bitter at the winners, reluctant to give due credit or respect to the winners, or is otherwise demeaning.
The version of the categorical imperative under consideration gives us a convenient way to identify what is wrong with being a bad sport. The extent to which we fail to respect others, whether in a game or not, as autonomous persons like ourselves who are striving to achieve their goals is the extent to which we violate the categorical imperative. Part of Kant's point in the categorical imperative is to emphasize that being moral is about recognizing that other people are like you, and that we should remember to put ourselves in "their shoes" in our interactions with them. The bad sport is too self-focused, wallowing in self-pity over a loss, or gloating in arrogance over a win, to the exclusion of considerations about the opponent's perspective. Being a bad sport is wrong for Kant because it is being disrespectful of one's opponents as ends in themselves.
When we play violent video games with other people, we cannot do any real physical harm to them, despite the heavy plasma blaster firepower we might bring down on their game character. But we can be bad sports towards them. We can demean them with our actions, we can be disrespectful of their humanity, and we can treat them as mere means to our own selfish ends (winning).And while being a bad sport is not a very serious moral crime for Kant (it is not murder, after all), he would say that one should strive to be a good sport. When you are a bad sport, you treat your opponent as a mere object and you cease to see them as persons or as an end in themselves. The problem here is not confined to playing violent video games. We can be a bad sport over cards, football, arm wrestling, dominoes, and so on.
Do violent video games deserve special consideration on these grounds? Playing video games over the Internet does have a peculiar problem. As anyone who has sent or been the recipient of a hostile, rude, or demeaning email, the faceless anonymity of the Internet makes it easier to disrespect people's value as humans. We are all prone to say or do things to people over the Internet that we would never consider saying or doing to them in person. It is not uncommon for violent video game players on the Internet to exchange demeaning, insulting, and disrespectful comments to each other. And all too often, these comments have a nasty sexist or anti-homosexual ring to them, making the connotations even uglier. Blasting someone into bloody pieces with a rocket launcher and then typing, "Die, bitch!!" or "Down on your knees, cocksucker!" is troubling to the Kantian on several levels, and for good reason.
The general connections between violence and many of our games deserves comment from Kantian grounds. While violent video games make a game out of simulated acts of violence, connecting violence with playing a game is not unique to them. Many of the games that humans play make sport of doing harm. We fence, do martial arts, wrestle, play paint ball and laser tag, and have boxing matches. The language of warfare and violence permeates our descriptions of football, rugby, and even chess. We conquer the opponent, crush their defense, invade their territory, cripple them, smash them, and kill them. What does the Kantian, who condemns violence as treating people as mere means, have to say about these violent aspects of the games we play? It would be unreasonable for a moral theory to condemn game playing outright on these grounds, and uncharitable to read Kant as doing sonata the very least, we should accept this recommendation from Kant that should not be confined to violent video games: people are valuable, and their rights and autonomy ought to be respected. We should take special care in our activities, including our recreation, to esteem their personhood.
Utilitarian, we have seen, are not just concerned with acts that are directly harmful, but also with acts that increase the risk of harm or danger. There are some parallel concerns for the Kantian who is not only worried about direct violations of one's duty, but also acts that increase the risk that one will violate one's duties. In the Lectures on Ethics, Kant raises just such a concern about our treatment of animals. As far as animals are concerned, he says, "we have no direct duties"[8]because they are not self-conscious and they are merely means to an end. But it does not follow that any treatment of them is acceptable; we still have an indirect duty to other humans through the animals. Kant recognizes that the right kinds of behavior and the disposition to do one's duty must be cultivated. We are to be kind and not to mistreat animals because a failure to do so would make us more likely to violate our duty to humans. He says, "tender feelings towards dumb animals develop humane feelings towards mankind."[9]Cruelty, if allowed in our lives will grow and worsen, whether it be directed at animals or humans. So we must be vigilant against it.
We can see the application of similar reasoning to the violent video game case for Kant. We have an indirect duty to animals because our dealings with them puts us at greater risk for directly violating our duty to humans. The Kantian might well argue that since it is people we are playing the games against, we are increasing our risk of violating our duty to them. Cultivating cruelty and indifference with regard to virtual suffering and death encourages the same towards real suffering and death, we can imagine Kant saying.
Despite the plausibility of Kant's analysis here, we should consider a difficulty. In the case of animals, Kant has taken it as obvious that cruelty to animals will spill over onto our treatment of humans. Indeed, he treats it as a widely known fact, noting that in England, "butchers and doctors do not sit on a jury because they are accustomed to the sight of death and hardened."[10]The video gamer might well respond at this point by arguing that it is far from obvious that pulling the joystick trigger similarly makes it easier to pull the real trigger. Playing a game, whether on the computer or on the rugby field, is not the same as real life. And beating your opponent, the gamer continues, is different morally and metaphysically from indulging in real cruelty on real animals. Far from disrespecting and dehumanizing each other, participants in many of the most violent sports like boxing, wrestling, and football often have the utmost respect and admiration for each other and each other's accomplishments.
Now reconsider the cases of risk, danger, and harm in sports that we considered from the utilitarian perspective. Kant’s analysis is not with costs and benefits simplicitur but with engaging in activities that could make it more likely that one would violate one's duty. So if you go to a soccer match and choose to sit in a section of particularly rowdy, impassioned fans, knowing that you are prone to get overly excited yourself and you find yourself participating in a riot against the opposing fans, the Kantian might justifiably object to your going to the game. And if it is possible for you to engage in the act without diminishing your commitment to your moral duty, by not going to the game, sitting in a different section, or staying calm, for example, then the Kantian may be satisfied.
But the argument by analogy from Kant's statement of our indirect duty to animals to the case of violent video games should not be accepted without reservation. Whether or not such behavior makes one more likely to violate one's duties to others is one of the few clearly empirical matters in Kant's ethics and could be settled with a careful study of what game players and non-game players are prone to do. But even if it turns out that Kant is right and engaging in some activities makes it more likely that we will violate our duties to others, it does not follow that that activity is therefore wrong. Notice that Kant does not argue that no one should be a butcher or a surgeon, even though it has a detrimental effect on the performance of their moral duties. Kant recognizes that some activities have a value that outweighs their negative side effects. Surgeons are obviously crucial in society, and Kant allows that the perhaps less vital role of butcher is morally acceptable (many more people could do their own butchering than could do their own surgery), as long as we are aware of the problems associated with the occupation.
So we have a number of questions to ask about the Kantian account. First, do activities like being cruel to animals or playing violent video games make it more likely that people will violate their moral duty to others? Second, if some activities do make duty violations more likely, at what point do the negative side effects of the activity justify avoiding or morally condemning the activity? And what I have argued is that playing violent video games will most likely not result in a person's running afoul of these two conditions. If we are too sensitive about the detrimental effects of games on a person's inclination to do her duty, we will be forced to condemn a wide range of activities along with violent video games that most people find morally acceptable. And it would be unreasonable to disregard the benefits that are also derived from many activities that may have a lesser negative impact as well. Furthermore, it does not appear that the Kantian account can say anything that isolates participating in simulations of immoral acts from other activities. What it can offer applies to all game or sport activities and does not capture our sense that there is something differently wrong about going through the motions of an immoral act.
IV.The Problem Remains
At this point, the critic of violent video games might still complain that whatever it is that is morally objectionable about playing them has not been adequately addressed. We have seen that the utilitarian cannot provide much support for the belief we may have that there is something wrong about the games. And the Kantian response seems to reduce to the recommendation that we should all be good sports when we play games, and that we should all remember to treat each other with respect and dignity. In both cases, what the utilitarian or the Kantian response fails to isolate cases of participating in simulated immoral acts, and their responses are in terms of its effect or treatment of other people. But we have yet to focus our attention on what harm might become of the person that is playing the game. Isn’t there something wrong about the activity for the person who is doing it?
A revised hypothetical example can help to bring out what might be bothering us about simulated acts of violence. Many people are familiar with the holodeck on the Star Trek series. On the holodeck an elaborate computer system is able to holographically simulate any situation for the occupant to experience. Holographic projectors, force field generators, and advanced artificial intelligence programs make a simulation of a beach at sunset or the east end of 19th century London look, feel, smell, and sound like the real thing. The only real persons or things in the holodeck are the human participants. Someone might complain that there are physical and mechanical constraints that would make building such a device physically impossible. But for the purposes of our example, it will suffice that such a device is logically possible. We can see the holodeck is a plausible extension of the improvements in video game technology that are allowing more and more realistic participation in the computer games that we currently see. Indeed, the computer manufacturers are striving to build technology that would allow the construction of something like a holodeck, and gamers anxiously await these kinds of technological improvements.
Imagine now that someone runs a program on the holodeck that allows him or her to commit holo-pedophilia with a simulated holo-child. The sophistication of the program and the hardware make it possible for the every aspect of the act to be portrayed in perfectly realistic detail. Similarly, someone could commit holo-genocide, holo-rape, or holo-murder. In these cases most of us have a strong moral intuition that there is something morally objectionable about the act itself, isolated from anything else that might happen outside the holodeck, and even though it is only simulated and no victim gets hurt. But the utilitarian does not seem to be able to object to the act itself without an appeal to some real consequences, perhaps when the person goes on to commit the act on real persons. And the Kantian cannot complain that the holodeck pedophile, murderer, or rapist is being a bad sport or is disrespecting some real persons. The Kantian might make the weaker complaint that engaging in such an activity would make it more likely that a person would go on to violate his or her duties to real humans. But for most of us, what seems wrong with the activity just described is not merely that the person might go on to do violate a duty to others or do harm to them. What strikes us about the example is that there seems to be something wrong with the activity without regard to what might happen outside the holodeck at some other time. And there is something wrong with the act solely with respect to the person who commits it.
V.The Aristotelian's Response to Violent Video Games and Holodeck Immorality
An Aristotelian or virtue ethical theory can provide us with the vocabulary and explanation of what our gut feelings tell us is wrong with holo-pedophilia, and perhaps by extension, to violent video games. Aristotelian ethics takes a fundamentally different approach to morality than the other theories we have addressed. Utilitarianism and Kantianism have both been more concerned with the performance of acts and their conformity with rules or principles. The utilitarian wants to know what the overall consequences will be; the principle of utility is the only yardstick for morality. The Kantian, is not concerned about the consequences, but she is concerned about the conformity of an activity with the Categorical Imperative. Both theories focus their attention on the acts themselves, and both theories test the acts against a rule of morality.
The Aristotelian takes a broader interest in the character of the person, rather than the implications of an act for other people or its conformity with a rule. To borrow Bernard Mayo's phrase, virtue ethics are more interested in "being" than in "doing."[11] Aristotle believes that the question of a person's character is more fundamental and more important than a person's obedience to rules of conduct. Aristotle argues that a deep, fulfilled happiness (eudaimonia) can only be achieved by pursuing the development of the capacities that are the unique function of human beings. Our function, and the traits that set us off from other beings, is our capacity to reason. So we must exercise our reason and govern our behavior with reason in order to achieve happiness.
In addition to possessing the capacity to reason, our lives are characterized by lower functions: we possess inborn desire, we have sensation, we are capable of movement, we need nourishment, we grow, and we seek to reproduce. We share some of these traits with plants and some of these traits with animals. In order for our rational nature to function properly, it must infuse, direct, and govern these other lower functions. Aristotle argues that reason will guide us on a moderated path between extreme behaviors and activities. When reason plays its appropriate role, we exhibit virtue. Reason guides us to the virtue of courage between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness. The virtue between the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is temperance. High-mindedness is between honor and disgrace.
Building a virtuous character does not come easily or quickly, according to Aristotle. It is not in our nature to be either virtuous or virtue less, he argues, so we must cultivate these character traits with education and habit. The way to be a good person, on Aristotle's view, is not simply to do the right thing as it is in the other theories. Mere outward conformity with what appears to be the good will not suffice. He says, "the agent must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sake, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character."[12] We can only become a right thinking and subsequently right behaving person through training. As a result, what particular choice one makes in a moral situation is not as important in the development of character as being courageous, being wise, or being temperate.
The Aristotelean has a ready answer to the question, what, if anything, is wrong with playing violent video games. By participating in simulations of excessive, indulgent, and wrongful acts, we are cultivating the wrong sort of character. The Aristotelian would respond that the holo-pedophile, or the holo-murderer is re-enforcing virtueless habits and dispositions in themselves. Notice also that the complaint the Aristotelian would make is different than the utilitarian’s. The utilitarian might argue that by indulging in holo-crimes, one makes it more like that you will commit real crimes. You lower your inhibitions, desensitize yourself to suffering, and make it easier to do actual harm to real people. We have seen, however, that the utilitarian cannot make this criticism of games without also criticizing a host of other activities like football, fencing, or even chess. But the Aristotelian does not object to holo-crimes on the basis that the activity will lead to other real crimes or harm. The Aristotelian is primarily focused on the character of the person who is participating. By engaging in such activities, you do harm to yourself in that you erode your virtue, and you distance yourself from your goal of eudaimonia.
The drawback of the Aristotelian position, however, is that we may find that it is all to willing to condemn or even ban a long list of activities that we value highly in the interests of character development. The Aristotelian may be too ready to condemn or ban books, movies, sports, television programs on the grounds that they promote the wrong sorts of character. A great deal of Aristotelian character development could be accomplished at the price of many human rights that we (and Kant, and the Utilitarians) would consider invaluable.
VI.Conclusion
We began this study by trying to identify what it is about participating in authentic, but simulated, immoral acts. Many people have a strong moral intuition that there is something objectionable about playing a game that requires and enables a player to inflict harm on representations of other players. Many of the objections to violent video games have centered around their alleged contribution to people's committing real violence. But we have seen that utilitarian arguments of this sort are actually the weakest objections that the critic can raise. The challenge of showing that playing violent video games is a causal factor in real violence is substantial, and the additional challenge of showing that increased risk outweighs all of the benefits derived from the games will not be met unless our threshold is lowered to point that it similarly condemns a host of other activities that we cherish. Kantians, it would appear, cannot offer us a justification for our suspicions either. They can admonish us to be good sports in our games, and remind us to value and respect other humans, despite the anonymity of the Internet. But it is not evident that ear that respecting people's humanity is made any more difficult by violent video games than it is by a wide range of sport and game activities that we consider to be morally acceptable. And even Kant refuses to condemn activities on those grounds alone. Aristotelianism, however, provides us with a more substantial and intuitive explanation of what we do wrong when we pull the virtual trigger. We re-enforce virtue less habits and make it harder for the individual to reach eudaimonic fulfillment.
Dr. Matt McCormick
Department of Philosophy
California State University
Sacramento, CA
[1] Jones Thompson, Maryann. "Half of U.S. Homes Now Have PCs ZD InfoBeads shows another 6.4 million American households acquired PCs in the past year."The Standard. http://www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/display/0,2799,9846,00.html
[2] Drabman, R.S. and Thomas, M.H."Exposure to filmed violence and children's tolerance of real-life aggression," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 1.1974: 198-199.
"Does Media violence increase children's toleration of real-life aggression?" Developmental Psychology. 1974. vol. 10: 418-421.
[3] Thomas, M.H. and Drabman, R.S."Toleration of real life aggression as a function of exposure to televised violence and age of subject," Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 21: 227-232.1975.
[4]Sacramento Bee, Wednesday, June 21, 2000
[5] Mill, John Stuart.Utilitarianism in Theories of Ethics, ed. by Paul A. Newberry. p. 317.Mountain View, Ca." Mayfield Publishing, 1999.
[6]Kant, Immanuel.Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.Trans. Lewis White Beck.New York:MacMillan Publishing Company, 1987.Akademie 429.
[7]Ibid., Akademie 422.
[8] Kant, Immanuel.Lectures on Ethics.trans. Louis Infield.Indianapolis:Hackett Publishing Company, 1963.240.
[9]Ibid.
[10]Ibid.
[11] Mayo, Bernard.Virtue and the Moral Life.New York:Macmillan Ltd., 1958.Find the page.
[12] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. trans. W.D. Ross in Theories of Ethics. ed. Paul A. Newberry. p. 111.Mountain View, Ca.: Mayfield Publishing, 1999.
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Questions about “Is it Wrong to Play Violent Video Games?”
1. What is the difference between dangerous acts, harmful acts, and risk increasing acts?
2. According to this article, can the utilitarian show that the harms outweigh the benefits of playing violent video games?
3. Can the Kantian make a special objection to violent video games that does not apply to other sports and game activities?
4. What kind of holodeck act is considered in connection with video games?
5. In one sentence, what objection can Aristotle make to participating in authentic simulations of immoral acts?