Monday 23 January, 2012

I initially planned on playing through the story of the game to experience what ethical issues would be raised by the plot, but that plan went awry rather quickly. While biking through the first mission, I ran down some pedestrians while taking a shortcut, which knocked me off my bike. Rather than be concerned for their health and feeling guilty as I would in real life, I was instead angry at them for impeding my progress and beat them to death. A cop saw this, and I was forced to steal a car to escape. Then I ran down several more pedestrians in my attempt to escape the police, ran red lights, and eventually stole another car simply because it was better. According to Kant, these actions are all morally wrong to commit, because if everyone committed them all the time, over ninety percent of the world's population would be dead within a day. Similarly, from the perspective of utilitarianism, this act is horrendously unethical, if for no other reason than the staggering amount of lives I made considerably worse just for kicks.

While I was expecting to commit some unethical acts through the course of the story, I was unprepared to go so far so quickly. It appears as though for good or ill, one of the prime contributors to moral behavior is the consequences of behaving immorally. Remove those, and it doesn't seem to take much to cause someone to go down the slippery slope.

"According to Kant, these actions are all morally wrong to commit, because if everyone committed them all the time, over ninety percent of the world's population would be dead within a day. "

Kant would agree that those actions are immoral, but not for that reason. Remember that Kant cares not for the negative (or positive) consequences of actions!

Now, what would Kant think of doing wrong things in GAMES?