Abstract
In this final chapter, a new approach to understanding the gamer’s dilemma is presented which seeks not to identify a single morally relevant factors which differentiates virtual murder from virtual paedophilia but, rather, aims to articulate the means by which (a) we acquire the moral attitude we do and (b) how this attitude is elevated to the status of a social norm. Constructive ecumenical expressivism is posited as the means of accounting for this and therefore explaining the intuition that is said to form the basis for the gamer’s dilemma. The new approach’s ability to resist objections raised against an appeal to social convention is also discussed, as is the form a normative ethic would take if one were to endorse constructive ecumenical expressivism.
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Notes
- 1.
I appreciate that there may be occasions when one is both amused and morally disapproves: say, when finding a joke amusing despite disapproving, morally, of the inherent sexisms.
- 2.
An anaphoric reference occurs when a word in a text refers to a previous idea in the text for its meaning. In the sentence “Fred always looked unkempt but this never seemed to bother him”, the word ‘him’ makes anaphoric reference to Fred.
- 3.
My use of Dunn’s term is slightly different to his original usage.
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Young, G. (2016). A New Approach to Resolving the Gamer’s Dilemma: Applying Constructive Ecumenical Expressivism. In: Resolving the Gamer’s Dilemma. Palgrave Studies in Cyberpsychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46595-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46595-1_6
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