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May Kantians commit virtual killings that affect no other persons?

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Abstract

Are acts of violence performed in virtual environments ever morally wrong, even when no other persons are affected? While some such acts surely reflect deficient moral character, I focus on the moral rightness or wrongness of acts. Typically it’s thought that, on Kant’s moral theory, an act of virtual violence is morally wrong (i.e., violates the Categorical Imperative) only if the act mistreats another person. But I argue that, on Kant’s moral theory, some acts of virtual violence can be morally wrong, even when no other persons or their avatars are affected. First, I explain why many have thought that, in general on Kant’s moral theory, virtual acts affecting no other persons or their avatars can’t violate the Categorical Imperative. For there are real world acts that clearly do, but it seems that when we consider the same sorts of acts done alone in a virtual environment, they don’t violate the Categorical Imperative, because no others persons were involved. But then, how could any virtual acts like these, that affect no other persons or their avatars, violate the Categorical Imperative? I then argue that there indeed can be such cases of morally wrong virtual acts—some due to an actor’s having erroneous beliefs about morally relevant facts, and others due not to error, but to the actor’s intention leaving out morally relevant facts while immersed in a virtual environment. I conclude by considering some implications of my arguments for both our present technological context as well as the future.

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Notes

  1. For a summary of some of the broader moral and policy concerns with violent video games, as well as some of the relevant empirical work on the effects of playing these games, see American Psychological Association (2020).

  2. My characterization of virtual violence mirrors Luck’s (2009) characterization of virtual murder, except that virtual violence is a broader category, since there are acts of virtual violence that aren’t virtual murder.

  3. McCormick (2001), Sicart (2005), Coeckelbergh (2011), and Wonderly (2017, p. 36–37). Note that empirical work is required to determine virtual acts’ actual effects on character, and vice versa.

  4. See Schulzke (2010) and Wonderly (2017) for discussion.

  5. See, e.g., McCormick (2001, p. 282–284); Schulzke (2010, p. 128–129); Wonderly (2017, p. 31–32).

  6. It’s important to note that because Kant’s Categorical Imperative is a fundamental and therefore fully general moral principle—see sect. “Kantian moral theory”—any act that violates the Categorical Imperative is morally wrong from a Kantian perspective, whether or not the act is a kind of killing or even violence. In this paper I focus my discussion mostly on acts of virtual violence, especially virtual killing or murder, primarily for convenience and clarity, and also because such acts have been the central focus of much of the literature on the ethics of video gaming and virtual acts. But my overall argument in this paper might be applied to other kinds of virtual acts as well.

  7. If one strongly identifies with one’s avatar, perhaps one’s interactions with virtual objects could count as direct.

  8. See Ramirez and LaBarge (2018, p. 251ff).

  9. Multi-sensory experience in VR is a priority in near-future technology development (Gartner, 2019). For discussion of haptic technologies for VR, see Biswas and Visell (2021). For discussion of multi-sensory stimuli in VR, including olfaction, see Melo et al. (2020).

  10. Sanchez-Vives and Slater (2005), Ramirez and LaBarge (2018, p. 251ff).

  11. Example borrowed from Annas (2011, p. 13).

  12. I cite Kant’s works by title abbreviation, and using volume:page number which which can be found in the margins of each of the following: G = Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1997a); LE = Lectures on Ethics (1997b); MM = Metaphysics of Morals (1996).

  13. While Kant here formulates the Categorical Imperative in terms of “humanity”, what’s important for Kant is not so much being a member of the species Homo sapiens, but rather being a rationally autonomous being (or ‘person’), whether of the human variety or, if there are (or could be) such things, extraterrestrials or artificial intelligences. See G 4:425. Famously, though, Kant denied that non-human animals have the requisite rational autonomy, and thus he thought that we have no moral duties toward them. See LE 27:413. Some contemporary philosophers—notably, Korsgaard (2018)—argue that a Kantian ethics can account for duties toward animals. For the sake of simplicity, in this paper I’ll set aside the important question about the moral status of non-human animals. But nothing essential to my overall argument depends on this question.

  14. On this interpretive point, I follow Timmons (2017, ch. 2).

  15. O’Neill (1975) introduced the terms ‘contradiction in conception’ and ‘contradiction in the will’. The precise nature of these contradictions, however, is a matter of scholarly debate (see Kleingeld, 2017). In this paper I’ve assumed O’Neill’s interpretation (1989, p. 132), but competing interpretations likely wouldn’t change my argument in this paper.

  16. Here I follow Herman’s general view of the contradiction in the will in such cases (1993, p. 121). cf. Kant MM 6:419–421.

  17. Some might worry about the ‘latitude problem’, viz., that contradictions in the will (i.e., second-stage failures of the UFL) violate only imperfect duties, and thus allow the agent some latitude, even for bullying or killing for fun. But Kleingeld (2019) argues persuasively that while Kant’s ethics allows some latitude for, e.g., acting on the duty of beneficence, there is no latitude for acting on maxims of non-beneficence, which would include bullying or killing for fun.

  18. One might also ask whether or not, in performing a given virtual act, one is acting from a good will. For Kant, one acts from a good will when one’s sole motive in acting is for the sake of duty itself. This is a question of the moral worth of the act, but not strictly speaking a question of the moral rightness of the act. My concern in this paper is the latter, not the former, and so my focus is on whether a virtual act fails to satisfy the Categorial Imperative. A further question is whether an act satisfies the Categorical Imperative if and only if the act is done from the sole motive of duty. This is a matter of interpretive dispute beyond the scope of this paper, but see Timmons (2017, ch. 5); Herman (1993, ch. 1).

  19. The authors cited in note 5, as I read them, hold or at least lean toward this position on the Categorical Imperative and virtual acts.

  20. Waddington (2007, p. 122–125), Wonderly (2017, p. 32).

  21. Brey (1999, p. 9), McCormick (2001, p. 283), Waddington (2007, p. 124–125), Schulzke (2010, p. 128), Wonderly (2017, p. 32). These authors draw on Kant’s discussion of our treatment of animals in LE 27:459 (cf. MM 6:443). For extended discussion of Kant’s views on ethics and animals, see Kain 2010.

  22. See Ryland (2019). Cf. McMillan & King (2017). For some relevant empirical work on the effects of persons’ connection to their avatars, see Chappell et. al. (2006), Simon et. al. (2009).

  23. Might virtual acts in such cases violate the Categorical Imperative in virtue of violating a duty to oneself? (See Waddington, 2007, p. 124 for this sort of suggestion.) Perhaps in some cases, but I suspect that violations of duties to self won’t explain what is primarily morally concerning about many virtual acts, including some of those done in the absence of other persons or their avatars. Since I’ll be arguing against the standard view without appeal to duties to self, I’ll set this question aside.

  24. Snyder’s maxim, like Manny’s, represented the circumstances of his act as involving a person as his target. But then, willing that everyone adopt his maxim would produce a conflict in the will: he’d be willing a world in which he might be the target of someone intending to kill him, conflicting with his necessarily willing the conditions of his own continuance as a rational agent.

  25. For general discussion about how the future of VR and related technologies might unfold, see Greengard (2019). For discussion of increasingly immersive multi-sensory VR technologies, see note 9. Another example of a new, more sensory-immersive technology is gaze-tracking, by which a VR display tracks the user’s eye and head movements as inputs. See Pai et al (2019). A technology closed related to VR is augmented reality (AR), in which perception of one’s environment is overlaid with virtual, computer-generated imagery and/or other sensory information. Development of AR/VR contact lenses, which might have increased potential to fool our senses at least temporarily, is already on the horizon (Savitz, 2021). Finally, a much more speculative frontier of VR involves whole-brain emulation and mind uploading, which, if possible and ever implemented, could provide a virtual environment completely indiscernible from the non-virtual world. See Sandberg and Bostrom (2008).

  26. I won’t, however, attempt to answer the question how often these kinds of cases happen. That’s a question best left to empirical study.

  27. For readers wondering about the ‘problem of relevant descriptions’, see note 30.

  28. At least, Kant would’ve thought so, since he thought that only rationally autonomous beings are persons, and thus that we have no moral duties toward animals. See note 21. Although in this paper I’ve set aside the question whether animals have moral status, the essentials of my discussion needn’t change to account for animals’ having moral status.

  29. Perhaps entering an environment with the background belief that no persons are present might even lower one’s moral inhibitions or preclude priming one’s moral sensitivities. If so, this could make it more likely, at least in circumstances like Reed’s, that one does wrong.

  30. One might ask: how do we know how much detail Reed’s maxim actually represents? Perhaps the maxim represents ‘shopkeeper’ rather than ‘someone who’s defenseless and cornered’. First, it’s plausible that often, in our maxims, many of the particular features of the circumstances are abstracted away. It’s highly unlikely that we represent our circumstances in full detail. In any case, the problem noted here—often called the problem of relevant descriptions—is one that any Kantian moral philosopher must address, so it isn’t a problem for my argument in particular. For discussion, see Anscombe (1958), O’Neill (2004), and Timmons (2017, ch. 2).

  31. For the philosophical implications of mind uploading, see the essays in Blackford and Broderick (2014). For optimistic appraisals of the possibility of mind uploading, see Chalmers (2014) and Sandberg and Bostrom (2008).

  32. Anderson (2019).

  33. Gash (2020).

  34. Lewis (2018).

  35. Levy (2002), Cisernos (2002). For discussion, cf. Luck (2009), Patridge (2013).

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments on the ideas treated in this paper, I’m grateful to Don Howard, Ting Cho Lau, Christian Miller, Raphael Mary Salzillo, audience members at the Georgia Philosophical Society, and two anonymous referees.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Wake Forest University, Tribble Hall B301, P.O. Box 7332, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA

    Tobias Flattery

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Flattery, T. May Kantians commit virtual killings that affect no other persons?. Ethics Inf Technol 23, 751–762 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-021-09612-z

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