E Dogg Capizzle wrote:Is fictional racism actual racism Blaboon? Is monopoly money actual money?:

E Dogg Capizzle wrote:[ Is monopoly money actual money?

happybaboon wrote:What I heard on the ads was "It was Jeff's fault, he's a Maori" and a sub-continental shop-keeper saying "You theiving little coconuts" -

You wouldn't hear racial slurrs like even on shows like South Park.

DropKick wrote:Lighten up

pissface wrote:but anyway, ficitonal racism is not racism, (like a character in a book being racist is not actually "real") but the racism in this bro town case would come from the story which portrays things in a racist way.

happybaboon wrote:What I heard on the ads was "It was Jeff's fault, he's a Maori" and a sub-continental shop-keeper saying "You theiving little coconuts" -

You wouldn't hear racial slurrs like even on shows like South Park.

Some guy wrote:The problem with claims that our responses to fictions with dubious content are immoral seems to be an assumption that a fictive response is of equivalent ontological, causative, and cognitive significance with a non-fictive response or attitude; and it is clear that this is the not case. In terms of cognitive equivalence, the Nichols and Stich cognitive theory of pretence shows an important reason why fictive and non-fictive cognition need not be strictly isomorphic; things that children pretencefully do may not reflect their actual character or beliefs (2000:119). Further, the fact that the motivation of acts of pretence is not drawn from a simulation of the cognitive states of the fictive character to which they correspond, means that participants need not instantiate a mental state to perform a fictive role. This is an instance of a more general ontological point alluded to earlier; a fictive representation does not need to reproduce what is fictionally represented to count as a representation. Because creators of fictions need not use a proposition to represent a proposition, or an explosion to represent an explosion, when participants in fictions create fictive content – as they do in interactive videogames via their cognitive and overt involvement with the electronic fictive prop – the representations they create need not be of the form of what is represented. This means that to be fictionally sadistic or violent, one does not need to be actually sadistic or violent , just as pretending to bake a cake need not involve actually baking a cake. Representations of violence need not involve real violence.

When I play videogames I am very careful with the videogame hardware, and would look unkindly on anyone who was literally violent while playing the game; participation with videogmes almost always lack real violence. It often involves vigorous behaviour – as in arcade games where the control surfaces are overtly physical – but this is not the same thing as violent behaviour. Thus the commonly held idea that ostensibly violent videogames – or even ultraviolent ones – really are violent is plainly false. An ultraviolent videogame really deserving that name would probably involve a novel development in control surfaces that literally allowed one to batter or kill their opponents! This is unlikely to occur because the entire point of videogmes is to have fictional experiences lacking the cost those experiences would have if they were real.

This is not just semantics. In fact, it is the blasé reference to the representations that constitute videogmes participation as violent or sadistic that is merely a case of semantics. We really need to look back to the chapter on semantics and ontology to understand the import of fictional ascriptions of violence. The apparent violence involved in a putatively violent videogame does not exist; it is only the apparent commitment of language within a fictive idiom. Though one might literally say, “that was a fairly violent means of clearing that section of game,” this judgment is true only of a fictional world. One must be involved in, and appreciating of, the fictive status of the representations to refer to these acts as violence rather than what they really are: non-violent (usually) pretenceful acts within a game of make-believe.

So why are critics of violent videogames so willing to buy into the idea that videogmes players are literally sadistic or violent? Again, I think it because they have confused fictive for non-fictive idioms, and seeing a fictive ascription of violence or sadism, and projecting this into a commitment into actual violence and sadism. Similarly, a recent news broadcast claimed a survey had discovered that up to a dozen acts of violence are depicted on television in an average night’s viewing. This sort of statement is inherently naïve; most of those depictions of violence were fictional and hence did not depict acts of violence at all. Often this lack of preciseness will not count for much, as it may just amount to a shorthand way of referring to videogames with representations of fictional violence. As such the infelicity may not be theoretically significant; in cases where one is looking at the correlation of aggressive behaviour external to the videogame (Gentile, et al.), it should not matter. But it is conceivable the something substantial could hinge on the semantic impreciseness. Just as one would not think of counting the number of times a person had read a Mills and Boon novel in a survey of their romantic encounters, it may be a mistake to include videogame representations as representations of violence, or interactions with videogames as instances of aggressive behaviour.

We are owed something more before our participation with videogames can be fairly called violent or sadistic, and thus could be the object of real (and not merely fictional) moral assessment. What might be needed could be some characterisation of the cognitive states of the fictive practice underlying videogames participation that would count these things as being essentially the same as being violent or sadistic. But it is hard to see what that could be given their pretenceful status. Are intentions – and pretenceful ones at that – the type of things that can be characterised as being sadistic or violent in the absence of violent actions? Some might develop such an argument in the following way: it is clear that participants do act on violent intentions; a violent intention is just one that leads to violent action, and it is clearly the case that wee Johnny is murdering the zombies. The unequivocal response to this is, no it is not the case that Johnny is murdering the zombies. An intention to be fictionally sadistic is not necessarily a sadistic intention.

Alternatively, perhaps what would establish the actual sadistic nature of my fictional involvement is the nature of the emotions or sentiments underlying it. I have argued here that the emotions play an important role in fictive practice, guiding our engagement with their fictions, and making them pleasurable and intense experiences. This goes for the emotions associated with aggression. Phenomenally, the playing of videogmes can be an intensely frustrating and anger-filled experience. Videogames may cause real episodes of anger and aggression, and perhaps it is the player’s enjoyment of or fixation upon these very real emotions that makes their fictive experiences morally dubious. I see real problems with this, however. Aggressive or angry emotions are not in themselves a bad thing; it is the consequences that they lead to that are negative. Should the emotions lack their common consequences, their enjoyment may not be something that is not intractably immoral. Later I argue that there may be something to be said for the view that videogmes allow the enjoyment of aggressive emotions.

headwound wrote:benign human nature?

funny is often irreverent