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Apr 7th, 2017 at 01:16:22 - The Last of Us Remastered (PS4) |
There's a scene where your character basically tortures this guy you were chasing to get information from him. Apparently he stole some things you were trying to sell and he sold them for himself. He pleads for his life and is resistant to your demands for information, so you break his arm and then kill him once he tells you what's happened. I don't know how I feel about this. Sure the guy stole from you, but you go on a killing spree just to get to him and then you torture him for information before you end his life. I guess you could argue that because he stole from you, you're free from the contract but I don't know if that would give you license to end other people's lives or even break his arm just for information. In this scenario I consider breaking his arm tantamount to killing him because of the apparent lack of medical services. Leaving his arm that way is likely to cause some sort of internal bleeding and without the proper attention (there wasn't any for all you knew because you had just killed everyone), he would probably die a very painful death. That's why I think breaking his arm just to kill him is equivalent to torture. I'm not 100% certain this was justified on your character's part.
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Apr 7th, 2017 at 00:54:21 - The Last of Us Remastered (PS4) |
Although, I'm posting in the same day, this was a separate gameplay instance. You're walking around an abandoned building when you notice a guy struggling beneath some debris. He tells you his mask broke (you're in an infected area where walking around without a mask will surely give you the virus). He obviously can't escape the debris on his own and he starts begging you to end his life before he turns. This situation begs the question, "Is it ever morally permissible to kill a person?" From a utilitarian standpoint, it seems like the answer here is yes. You don't personally know what the zombie experience may be like, it might be awesome, but it sure doesn't look like it. "Turning" looks like a terrible way to live life, so killing the man now is better than allowing the undesirable turn. On top of that, you don't know if he's going to come back later and eat you because you left him to turn.
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Apr 7th, 2017 at 00:49:49 - The Last of Us Remastered (PS4) |
So I started playing the last of us today and even in the first cut scenes I noticed an interesting ethical dilemma. As you're driving away from the city, you're not entirely sure what's happening but you drive past a family that is asking for help. They've got a child with them and they're screaming for you to stop. Your brother starts to stop the car, but you tell him to keep driving away. Then your daughter says, "We should have helped them." Should you have, though? I think in a state of emergency like that, or maybe Hobbes would have been inclined to say that it was more like a state of nature at that point, then I don't think you would be morally obligated to risk yourself to help other people. In fact, I would go as far as to say the right thing to do is to not stop for the people since you also have a child you're trying to protect. The risk far outweighs the gain, and stopping for them would be completely supererogatory.
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Feb 23rd, 2017 at 11:59:21 - Witcher 3 (XBONE) |
This morning while I was playing Witcher 3, I had another Kantian experience. Except this time it wasn't any decision I had to make, it was more of a situation your character witnesses. In the game, one of the captains of the army is taking taxes from one of the farmers. The guy was to bring him a certain quantity of food because of how big his yield from this season was. The guy lies to the captain initially about how much his farm brings in, but the captain is too savvy for that nonsense. The captain feels pity towards the guy though and doesn't charge him the full amount he could and asks the guy to come back the next day. The guy is really grateful and goes away. I ended up having to go do some other story missions where I had to kill a griffin (which was outrageously difficult), and then I came back. When I got back, the farmer was there but he had delivered spoiled goods. Which was a bit of a dick move. (That's another thing we talked about a while back). It reminded me of Kant again, where keeping promises is important to keep a society going. It also ties into the social contract theory we were talking about with Hobbes. To keep a healthy society going, we need to reasonably expect people to act a certain way, ie keep their promises. When they don't act accordingly, it makes society pretty difficult, hence punishments. If the farmer guy had just given the captain the goods he was supposed to, which were less than what was expected, the captain would have been happy and he would have been more inclined to be lenient with other farmers. But because this guy broke his promise, now the captain has to punish the guy for delivering spoiled goods, but now he can't justify being lenient with other people.
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wjoseph has been with GameLog for 7 years, 10 months, and 5 days |
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