Today’s Plan
- A Brief Lecture on Ethics and Morals
- Do A Thing!
- A Quick Check and Responses
- Trolley Problems, and a Few Absurd Trolley Problems
- Homework
A Brief Lecture on Morals and Ethics
For me, morality is the study of the rules that govern our behavior, our internalization of the rules, what we value and believe. The spiritual-internal vs. secular-external distinction isn’t particularly productive for me. I don’t care if the rules come from state agencies, critical reason or thinking (Kant) or spiritual institutions (religion). I simply think about morality as the rules we would right down if I asked you waht is right and what is wrong. Morality is how we develop and internalize the rules: thou shalt not kill. A moral. I am not particularly concerned where the rule comes from or who enforces it. I see morality as the study of the rules we internalize, and how those rules govern our behavior, how those rules influence the way we come to see ourselves and the way we formulate/articulate our desires.
Ethics, for me, signals how we employ, actualize, our moral values in lived experience. It is how/whether we (choose to) act. What do we do when our rules seem to fail us? When our rules come into conflict? When it is unclear how our generic rules apply to a messy, complicated, specific situation? Ethics attends to those moments when we make a decision that we think feels right even though the rules might tell us it is probably wrong (I think you can probably see how Papers, Please is an ethical game in the sense I am describing–a game in which what is “right” isn’t clear, a game that makes us decide through a haze of uncertainty). If morality is our sense of what should be, ethics is the study of how we actually act. Ethics operates in relation to morality, often in its shadow, in the places where morals break down. I think the study of ethics is the most interesting when we encounter a situation in which or moral convictions come into conflict. Again, if we believe that “thou shalt not kill,” then how do we also celebrate the soldier? How do we operate in the face of competing morals, competing “goods,” competing obligations?
My understanding of ethics is heavily indebted to the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas’s work encourages us to recognize our aversion to difference, and the lengths humans will go to eliminate alterity (that which is strange, different, unknown or unknowable to them). He jests that we have an allergy to the strange and different, to what he terms “the other.” We seek to “joyously possess” the world as a certain knowledge. Such possession is akin to mastery–to rule the world without question. To eliminate questions that make us uncomfortable. Rather than deal with the other, we desire the same–we desire to know, label, categorize, understand something. Facing something we do not know, or cannot know, can bring out the worst in us. To be ethical, for Levinas, is to learn to inhabit this discomfort, disequilibrium and repress the desire to transform something other into something familiar, what he calls “the same.” To welcome the other as an other, to let them be different, rather than to convert them into the “same” thing that I already know. [First principle is ethics not ontology–before we know what is, we are aware of the presence of an-other that calls us into being etc etc].
Ethics, for Levinas, is learning to recognize and prioritize others, to put their needs ahead of our own. Ethics becomes extra complicated when we realize that others make different demands on us–and no matter how generous we might want to be, we cannot give everything to everyone. To give to one other often means we have to take away from an other. Thus, in his later career, Levinas pays more attention to the concept of justice. Justice requires I choose between the competing demands of the other and the neighbor–that I chose knowing I must betray one of them. Their is no justice without choice, no choice without imposition. [Levinas’s formula: to make the choice that causes the least amount of violence].
More than just an analytical science of how we act, ethics for me marks our ability to handle, to process, the unknown. How do we feel, and respond to our feelings, when we encounter the strange? Do we curl back in repulsion? Express exasperation (*why do they do that? that’s so weird?*). Or do we become self-critical? Do we invite reflection (*why don’t I do that?*). In short, for Levinas ethics is a practice of hospitality. How/do we welcome the stranger? Something different? Further, what happens when we encounter something we cannot control, when we have to make a decision with no clear right answer, when we face something that resists our mastery?
What does this have to do with the distinction between morality and ethics? I believe that the more we recognize and study ethics (as moments of moral indecision), the better we become at carefully choosing how to act when we have no one true, certain, “right” answer to guide our choice. We have to learn to deal with complexity, and the icky feeling that it can produce in us. Video games can help us do that. The point of moral philosophy, of interrogating why we think or feel a particular way, why we make a decision, is to become more familiar with what we value. To reveal consistency, or inconsistency. To invite indecision or the second guess. To, hopefully, learn to live more thoughtfully.
Our last project, focused on the work of Miguel Sicart and the game Detroit Become Human questions whether games, by constructing *sophisticated* ethical problems, can make players more ethical in the sense I have just worked out. The reading you will do for homework will provide us some insight into how Sicart thinks moral problems should (and shouldn’t) be formulated in games to best encourage the kind of critical thinking and questioning I describe in the previous paragraph.
Do A Thing
Trolley Problems, and a Few Absurd Trolley Problems
Let’s talk about the Trolley Problem, created by Foot and complicated by Thompson. Very simply: the trolley problem is a philosophical thought experiment created in the 1970’s by philosopher Philippa Foot.
So, if you haven’t guessed by now, here is my theory for what video games have learned is their unique province: they can leverage the emotional unrest, affectation, difficulty, disequilibrium of Trolley Problems. Foot’s trolley problem is meant to explore the moral consistency, or lack thereof, people use to make life or death decisions. Video games can proceduralize this thought experiment, to make it more visceral or “real.” We feel the decision–this kind of feeling is called “affective” or pathetic (deriving from the Greek term for emotion, pathos).
In a book or a film, we are left to watch the trolley driver pull the switch or not. The author decides. The author justifies. Perhaps she does so to secretly stir our outrage, to get us to deconstruct her flawed reasoning. She can spur reflection, contemplation, resistance. But we are always a bystander to the action, distanced from the choice. We are witness.
But not so in a game. I remember my first play through of Dragon Age: Origins. The details are a bit foggy–I remember encountering some elves and some werewolves. The werewolves were created by dark elven magic? And then, like Frankenstein’s monster, abandoned by their creators. At some point a wolf had killed an elf. Maybe it was self-defense? I honestly don’t remember. But I remember, unexpectedly, having to decide which species to exterminate. Only one can survive. Neither is innocent. And there is no heroic path to saving them both (well there is, but you are probably only going to have that option if you have made a series of other decisions, and only about 1 in every 10 player unlocks that “perfect” ending). The game forced me to be responsible. I must pull the lever and determine who gets hit by the train.
I’ve played games since roughly 1984 on my Atari 2600. I’ve murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions of aliens and demons and terrorists and zombies and horde (“For the Vanguard” or “For the Alliance!”). I’ve killed all these things from a moral position that authorizes their death. I’ve never been troubled by all this killing. Those aliens threaten our light. Those demons threaten Tristram. Those terrorists threaten democracy. Those zombies would eat me and the few others remaining in Raccoon City. I killed them all without friction. (Save for Silent Hill 3, one of the greatest mindfuck games of all-time unfortunately lost to history–“they look like monsters to you?”).
But Dragon Age interrupted my joyous possession of the world, my righteous action, my moral foundation. It stung me. This was something different. I introduce the Trolley Problem, the lever, the notions of disequilibrium, ethics, and agency as a way of thinking about games. I imagine many of you are already thinking of games that leverage this dynamic. Soon we will work together to generate lists of games–AAA, mobile, indie–that we can play and explore as a class (in addition to my required experience: Walking Dead episode 1).
As should become clear through the next project, I feel that games can spur ethical reflection. However, as Miguel Sicart notes, there are things that both programmers and players must do for games to best realize this potential. We will explore these things in class. For now, I would suggest that reflection is a key component of ethical thinking and growth. It isn’t enough to simply “do,” we must ask why we do. It isn’t enough to simply “feel,” we must ask why we feel. Both the procedural paper and the tragedy paper have begun this kind of work.
A Wicked Brief Introduction to Moral Systems
Last class I lectured on how I think about ethics, arguing for a sense of ethics:
- Tied to moments in which moral laws come into conflict or when it is unclear which choice is the more moral. Moments of pause or indecision in which the plentitude of possibilities give us pause
- And as attempts to overcome our inability to handle the stranger and the strange.
Today I’ll open over-simplifying those definitions a bit. Let’s call ethics the study of how we make difficult choices. To study ethics is to become more self-reflective and self-aware. As the skit from The Good Life implied, this can lead to a kind of paralysis by analysis (philosophers and theorists often are excellent at discovering and mapping complexity, less great at deciding on one definitive course of action). Rhetoricians (some of us) recognize the need for deep analysis, but often insist on a moment of decision, where analysis has to turn into action. That is a lecture for another course. (In my rhetorical theory class we work with an essay called “The Q Question” by Richard Lanham that urges humanities scholars toward more public, pragmatic projects; see also the work of Bruno Latour, especially Politics of Nature).
Given the complexity of human decision making, there’s a lot of different theories and approaches to ethics. Let me lay out 4 of them:
- Deontology or Moral Law
- Teleology or Consequentialism
- Virtue Ethics
- Hospitality Ethics
Deontological ethics are based on identifying moral laws and obligations. To know if we are making the right decision, we ask ourselves what the rules are. For instance, if you didn’t lie to Herschel because lying is wrong, then you were invoking a deontological frame. You made a deontological decision. You worked back from the specific concrete moment to a (prior) conviction (philosophical knowledge that precedes any human experience, stuff we might “innately” know, is termed “a priori”–some empirical philosophers, like John Locke, argue that nothing is a priori, everything is learned). Deontological ethics get critiqued because sometimes moral laws come into conflict and because it requires absolute adherence to the law without thought of context. At core: God, Reason, Science, common sense dictate right from wrong.
Consequential ethics look ahead, from the action and decision, to its consequences. You use prior knowledge to make hypotheses about what will happen. Your focus here isn’t on what other people or institutions would declare right or wrong, but on producing “the greater good.” This is often called utilitarianism, which strives to imagine what will make the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Another form of consequentialism is hedonism, which strives to make the most (personal) pleasure and minimize (personal) pain. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you further or kick you out of the farm, then you probably made a hedonistic decision. If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you thought lying might lead him to question you and kick you and Clementine out of the farm, then you made a consequential decision. Consequential ethics get critiqued because they can lead us into hurting minority populations. One could argue, for instance, that slavery contributed to the “greater good”–that enslaving 3 people makes life wonderful for 7. I’d say they are wrong–but one can rationalize pain in relation to happiness, which can lead us down dark paths, trying to calculate levels of pain, which is precisely why Kant thought of consequentialist ethics as “wishy washy” and wanted to develop something more universal. At core: act in service to the greater good.
Virtue ethics are a bit different–though, like consequential ethics they rely on our imagination. Virtue ethics asks us to imagine, in that situation how a good person would act. This, in a sense, mixes deontology (who is the good here? what rules do they follow? what institutions would they represent?) with the situational flexibility of consequentialism. If deontology operates around rules that govern behavior, virtue ethics begins by establishing the characteristics common to good people (bravery, compassion, justice, etc). Often we tie virtue ethics to a particular person–for instance, we might cite Martin Luther King’s dedication to non-violence, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline (but, like, if you try to tell me that MLK was “cooperative” or “less radical” then you are simply telling me you haven’t read MLK. MLK’s domestication is a topic for another day). At core: imagine what a great person would do in this situation.
If you didn’t lie to Herschel because you believe a good person should tell the truth and be brave, and trust others (etc.), then you are exercising virtue ethics. Note: this is different than deontology, because here you don’t *have* to follow the rules, and there might be times that lying (say, to protect someone from Nazi pursuit), is justified.
Ethics of hospitality also involve an effort of imagination; this time it is our task to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and imagine a decision from their perspective. Is this a decision we would want someone to make if they were in our position? We can think of this as a more radical version of the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule (from Lev. “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), except here we are self-skeptical enough to realize that the other might not want the same things as us. So rather than assume the other is just like us, we train ourselves to recognize and honor their difference, their alterity. Hence hospitality, since we train ourselves to welcome the strange, the unfamiliar. Ethics, here, trains people to negotiate the unknown and the contingent. Ethics as the impossibility of ever walking in another’s shoes, but trying like hell all the same. At core: ethics as making “space” for other people.
Final Thought: Morals, Ethics, and Video Games
I want to reserve the final 10 minutes of class for you to write a comments, question, response to today’s class. What stuck out? What are you unsure of? What would you challenge? What would you want to contribute?
Homework
There is no class on Thursday as I will be away at an academic conference. In lieu of class, do two things:
- Read Sicart’s “Moral Dilemmas” essay in the Files section of Canvas and respond to the questions in the Canvas 11.R assignment
- Download the PollEverywhere App for a cell phone, tablet, or create an account on a laptop. We will start using this in next Tuesday’s class to collaboratively play Detroit: Become Human
