Thursday, May 27th, 2021

Title: Anything but a first person shooter: The ethics of recreational hunting in virtual space

Author Name: Baerg, Andrew

Institutional Affiliation: University of Houston-Victoria

Keywords: hunting, digital games, ethics

Abstract: Traditional forms of communication media have cultivated the representation of ethics via representation in entertainment. Going back to Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussion of the theater as a site for the representation of ethics, concerns about the ways in which media represent ethical choices continue into the present with the more recent medium of the digital game. Digital games have been popularly attacked as a medium that encourages violence and anti-social behavior. Yet, over the past decade, scholars have begun to reflect on the intersection of ethics, ideology, and video games (Bogost, 2007, Davisson & Gehm, 2014; Sicart, 2009). Video games provide a unique medium for ethics in that they offer players the opportunity to ethically reflect on their presence in the game’s world via the game’s rules and representation. This ethical reflection with a game’s rule systems and representation subsequently has the capacity to foster ethical reflection in the world outside the game. This essay explores a case study of digital game ethics via an analysis of the hunting simulation, The Hunter: Call of the Wild. The paper uses this case study to argue about how a video game might cultivate a more socially conscious reflection on recreational hunting. With this analysis, the paper provides an additional contribution to the understudied area of digital games and the environment while also furthering knowledge about how the ethics of recreational hunting has been mediated in a popular new communication medium.

Key citations:

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.

Davisson, A., & Gehm, D. (2014). Gaming citizenship: Video games as lessons in civic life. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, 4(3/4), 39-57.

Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.

Dr Rebekah Humphreys,

University of Wales Trinity St David, Lampeter, UK

Key Words: games, fair-play, Suits, bloodsports

Abstract:

In the light of debates surrounding the recent killing of Cecil the lion – debates which sparked the public’s interest in the question of whether so-called ‘blood sports’ are actually ‘sports’ - this paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of blood-sport as a concept. Through utilising a generalised notion of sport as well as the concept of fair-play, the objective will be to examine whether blood-sports are games and to analyse to what extent, if any, blood-sports can be properly called ‘sports’. Recent work by S. P. Morris (IJAP, 2014) argues that ‘fair-chase hunting’ can be classified as a game and a sport. Pace Morris, this current paper concludes that it is doubtful that blood-sport is a game, and that even if one assumes that it is a game, it cannot be properly classed as sport, and that a fair-chase code undermines itself in the context of so called ‘blood-sports’.

Key citations:

- Bernard Suits, ‘What Is a Game?’, Philosophy of Science, 34 (2), 1967, 148-156.

- Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, third edn. (Ontario, New York, and London: Broadview Press, 2014 [1978]).

- S. P. Morris, ‘Challenging the Value of Hunting: Fair Chase, Game Playing, and Intrinsic Value’, Environmental Ethics, 35 (3), 2013, 295-311.

Title: Sport, Human Flourishing, and Violence Against Animals

Author name: Alex Wolf-Root

Institutional affiliation: University of Colorado Boulder

Keywords: sport, human flourishing, animal ethics

Abstract:

Sport provides an arena for pursuing human excellence and flourishing. Many of us devote significant time and energy towards our sport of choice, and our sport performance is an important part of our personal identity and wellbeing. However, not all means of pursuing excellence and flourishing through sport are acceptable.

This paper will examine the acceptability of using non-human animals in the pursuit of human excellence and flourishing through sport with regards to sport-related issues of hunting them, eating them, and racing them.

I will start by discussing the positive role that sport can play in human excellence and flourishing, and argue that the central role sport plays in many people’s lives can be justifiable. Then, I will address limits to pursuits of excellence and flourishing through sport that involve other human animals. From there, I will investigate some of the major ways that non-human animals are used in the pursuit of excellence and flourishing through sport, arguing that many are morally unacceptable. Specifically, I will argue that hunting for sport and eating non-human animals for sport performance are always morally wrong. However, I will also argue that there are some morally acceptable ways to use non-human animals in sports, although this will be a small subset of the ways that non-human animals are currently used in sport.

Key Citations:

Hsiao, Timothy (2020) “A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting” Sport Ethics and Philosophy. 14:1, 26-34

Suits, Bernard (1978) The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Tantillo, James A. (2001) “Sport Hunting, Eudaimonia, and Tragic Wisdom” Philosophy in the Contemporary World. 8:2, 101-112

Title: The Ethics of Pigeon Racing

Author(s) name(s): Deckers, Jan

Institutional affiliation: School of Medical Education, Newcastle University

Keywords: ethics, pigeons

Abstract:

Whilst pigeon racing is in decline as a sport in many Western countries, it is growing in other places, for example in some countries in Asia. There is a dearth of academic research on pigeon racing. Many people appear to think that it does not merit moral scrutiny. My view is at odds with this view. Pigeon racing used to be very popular in my home country, Belgium, and I was a passionate ‘pigeon fancier’ for many years. In spite of my enthusiasm, I never liked some practices associated with the sport. Crucially, I never liked the idea of killing pigeons, which is part and parcel of the sport. Killing pigeons is also associated with masculinity, playing into stereotypes about what men ought (not) to be. In my view, many of these killings were not justified: the questionable good associated with breeding birds who can fly faster than those of one’s competitors seems to pale into insignificance compared with the good of allowing pigeons to continue to live, at least as long as they are not too ill. Other moral problems that are associated with the sport include transporting pigeons, the widowhood system, the races themselves, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, in spite of the fact that many have been found to result in detrimental health effects. By developing ideas published in earlier work, my presentation explores these moral concerns and argues for an end to pigeon racing.

Key citations:

Deckers J. Pigeon Racing. In: Linzey, A, ed. The global guide to animal protection. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013, pp.216-217.

MacKenzie, P., Cruelty to Racing Pigeons. The Veterinary Record 1973; 92 (22): 600.

Scope, A., Filip, T., Gabler, C., Resch, F. The Influence of Stress from Transport and Handling on Hematologic and Clinical Chemistry Blood Parameters of Racing Pigeons (Columba livia domestica). Avian Diseases 2002; 46(1): 224-229.

She Shoots to Conquer:

Women Sport Hunters in the Age of Empire

Johnson, Clelly

Institutional affiliation: Western Michigan University

Key Words: Gender, Wildlife, Hunting

Abstract:

To most, the mention of the big-game hunter conjures up images of mustachioed men in khaki-with a monocle, skulking through impenetrable jungles followed by indigenous labor in pursuit of wild man-eating beasts. The colonial hunter has been portrayed as the purveyor of civilization to the “savages” and the tamer of the colonial frontier. Little has changed from the colonial hunter of the past to the big-game hunters of today, perhaps only the lack of monocles. However, this historiography is not about what we have often imagined the big game hunter to be during the colonial era. This historiography is about the women who also came to represent colonial power through the sport of hunting. The scant imagery of women who took part in hunting safaris is that of the one who stayed behind at camp, who would faint at the slightest provocation that disturbed their Victorian milieu. However, evidence has shown that many women who did take part in hunting safaris did so with reckless abandon, perhaps using their hunting vacation as an escape from the gendered sphere assigned to them at the Metropole. The male and female hunters of this period took on mythic personas in literature, with men being equated to the biblical hunter Nimrod and women to the Roman goddess of the hunt Diana. While the reasons behind each gender taking part in big-game hunting might have been different, they both, in the end, wielded imperial influence through the activity upon the indigenous people and nature.

Citations:

John MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).

Edward Steinhart, Black Poachers White Hunters (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006).

Angela Thompsell, Hunting Africa: British Sport, African Knowledge and the Nature of Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Title: Should We “Let ‘Em Go to Let ‘Em Grow?” Indigenous Environmental Philosophy and the Ethics of Angling

Author(s) name(s): Gleaves, John

Institutional affiliation: California State University Fullerton

Keywords: Angling, Conservation, Catch-And-Release

Abstract: The ethics of angling for fish has received much less attention than ethical discussions surrounding hunting for wild animals. The limited attention may stem from Anglo-European discourses assigning water-dwelling fish different cultural and moral spaces than those assigned to their land-dwelling counterparts. Additionally, anglers’ ethos of catch-and-release fishing—a particularly widespread ethos among the fly fishing community—avoids criticisms generated by hunters killing wildlife. However, several arguments [1, 2] have challenged the moral acceptability of recreational catch-and-release fishing.

While many anglers consider catch-and-release fishing to be an ethically and ecologically correct practice, I will begin by asserting that the ethical challenges carry merit and demand a rethinking of catch-and-release angling as a morally endorsable practice. However, I will introduce a previously unconsidered argument that asserts catch-and-keep fishing avoids many of the criticisms successfully posed against the catch-and-release angling practice. Having separated the ethics of catch-and-keep fishing from the ethics of catch-and-release fishing, I will then argue that indigenous models of environmental ethics[3]—provide spaces, albeit far narrower, for anglers to ethically practice catch-and-keep angling. In this model, I will argue that a restrained form of angling—fly fishing with barbless hooks during assigned seasons for sustainable harvesting of wild or non-native fish—not only offer a morally defensible angling practice but also promote behaviors with significant advantages for promoting environmental stewardship.

Having argued catch-and-keep angling can be ethically defended, I will conclude with a discussion of practical considerations. Such considerations include ending stocking practices of hatchery fish in favor of conservation efforts to develop healthy fisheries and waterways. For anglers, the practices carved out above invites awareness of interconnection with nature as now natural food sources, spawning cycles, and river habitat play greater roles in their thinking. The paper concludes by anticipating and responding to several practical challenges critics may pose to the wholesale adoption of catch-and-keep fishing practices, including concerns that catch-and-keep angling may decimate wild fisheries and damage river ecology.

Key citations:

1. Elder M. Fishing for Trouble: The Ethics of Recreational Angling. The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. Springer; 2018. p. 277-301.

2. Wadiwel D. ‘Fishing for Fun’: The Politics of Recreational Fishing. Animal Studies Journal. 2019;8(2):202-28.

3. Kelbessa W. Indigenous environmental philosophy. The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy. 2011.

Author: Levente Nagy

Affiliation: ELTE University Budapest, PhD candidate,

Keywords: play, game, animals

Key Citations:

Ortega y Gasset: Meditations On Hunting

Aldo Leopold: Land Ethics

Wolfgang Behringer: Cultual History of Sport

On Sport, Animals and the Creation of Values

In my presentation I will focus on two aspects of the relatedness of animals and sport.

First, in Part 1, I examine the background to certain blood sports, i.e. bull fighting, cock fighting, hunting and fishing. My starting point is an enquiry into the quintessential nature of sport. What makes a sport: sport? What values develop an activity into sport activity? I argue that the main criterion for true sport is its ability to create values, while blood sport, similar to wars, destroys social and environmental values. In addition, this destructive function is detectable at individual and moral levels, too. Since various types of blood sport extend back to the ancient past, I also attempt to highlight the historical context they functioned in.

In Part 2, those types of sport are in my focus, which are done by man and animals together. I will describe dressage and, some historical types of events, such as hippodrome, chariot races and medieval tournaments. Interestingly, these latter types of ancient activities do not exist in modern-day sport. In relation to the role of animals in sport, my presentation also considers the issue of wild- and domesticated animals.

It is a significant philosophical question that provides a starting point for my investigations. Are we part of nature, are we part of wildlife? Can people organize races and competitions in the interest of animals? Are these races and competitions needed at all? Since play is one of the most significant components of sport, further I will analyze the relatedness of the notions of sport and play. In this respect the question arises: sport played with the participation of animals can be called sport at all? Do animals play at all in situations, when they are made part of a sport event? Eventually, I conclude that, although animals may be engaged in play and they may compete, but, the key features of sport, including organized competitions, sportiness and fair play are never parts of activities done by animals.