I teach a class at Southern Methodist University on the Ethics of Video Game Development. If that sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen… well shame on you, you cynic.
We have good discussions. “Good” by some definition. Oh, all right—invigorating then. Invigorating to me anyway.
But I am not always persuaded by the ethical arguments that students advance in class and in papers. So by way of:
- letting off steam,
- seeking commiseration from teachers of ethics in other institutions,
- warning future students away from poor courses of reasoning, and
- reveling in the unbridled use of numbered lists
…I hereby offer this Top Ten List of my least favorite ethical arguments; or, if you prefer, my favorite unethical arguments.
- Hollywood has been doing it for years; therefore it must be ethical for the games industry to do it.
- It’s hard to decide what is right or wrong; therefore there is no right or wrong.
- People disagree about what is right or wrong; therefore there is no right or wrong.
- Because of Evolution, new things are always better than old things; in the old days, people used to perceive X as wrong; therefore X is right.
- It’s evil to say that something is evil; therefore there is no evil.
- You are unlikely to get caught performing action X; therefore action X is not wrong.
- Ethical intuitions and urges are a product of evolutionary biology; therefore people simply do what they are “wired” to do; therefore there is no right or wrong.
- “Everyone” (contemporary society/everyone we know/everyone in this room) generally agrees that X is right; therefore X is right.
- I perceive myself as generally doing good; in my experience of people so far, consisting as it does of parent-child, teacher-student, casual romantic, and generally low-stakes peer relationships, I perceive other people as generally doing good; therefore people are generally good; therefore discussion of ethics is pointless, because people generally know and do good anyway.
- To me, X; therefore X.
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2 Comments
That class does sound really invigorating. I read 2 books this semester on my own that pertained to ethics, and they got me really curious about the subject.
One of them had its ultimate conclusion that God is the source of ethics, and the other was more ambiguous: that ethics exist and are important but are hard to define.
So in the secular sphere, if there is no explicit ultimate source, how do people define ethics?? Based on government law? The Law of Nature?
There are a number of obvious ways. Here are a couple of common ones:
1.) Most cultures generally agree on a set of ethics. Use one of those. Optionally, defend this choice by observing that if they’ve lasted for hundreds/thousands of years, they are probably doing things reasonably right as far as supporting a functional society.
2.) Decide what you believe is the good that ethics ought to support. Greatest good to society, personal freedom of choice, least harm to others, etc. Derive the rest of your ethics from the question of what is necessary to support that good. Optionally, consider several possible choices for the “good”, and pay particular attention to the places where they result in similar ethics.
If you believe in ethics handed down from a deity, what do you think are the reasons why the deity chose the ethical rules that they did? Sure, God is ineffable — but the ethical rules of the Bible generally seem to make sense as far as being a set of rules that will support and uphold a functional and healthy society. They’re clearly not just arbitrary (as opposed to, say, the Levitican rules that at least seem pretty arbitrary in many cases).