A meta-ethical approach to single-player gamespace: introducing constructive ecumenical expressivism as a means of explaining why moral consensus is not forthcoming

Young, G ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0628-0931, 2014. A meta-ethical approach to single-player gamespace: introducing constructive ecumenical expressivism as a means of explaining why moral consensus is not forthcoming. Ethics and Information Technology, 16 (2), pp. 91-102. ISSN 1388-1957

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Abstract

The morality of virtual representations and the enactment of prohibited activities within single - player gamespace (e.g., murder, rape, paedophilia) continues to be debated and, to date, a consensus is not forthcoming. Various moral arguments have been presented (e.g., virtue theory and utilitarianism) to support the moral prohibition of virtual enactments, but their applicability to gamespace is questioned. In this paper, I adopt a meta-ethical approach to moral utterances about virtual representations, and ask what it means when one declares that a virtual interaction ‘ is morally wrong ’. In response, I present constructive ecumenical expressivism to (i) explain what moral utterances should be taken to mean , (ii) argue that they mean the same when referring to virtual and non-virtual interactions and ( iii) , given (ii), explain why consensus with regard to virtual murder, rape and paedophilia is not forthcoming even though such consensus is readily found with regard to their non-virtual equivalents.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Ethics and Information Technology
Creators:	Young, G.
Date:	2014
Volume:	16
Number:	2
ISSN:	1388-1957
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s10676-014-9336-7 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	10 Nov 2015 08:21
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:56
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/26202

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