Thomas Montefiore

Recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI) are transforming creative industries, raising urgent ethical questions. This paper explores the impacts of GenAI on the meaningfulness of work for specialist, embedded, and support creatives. By integrating Amabile’s componential model of creativity with a holistic framework of meaningful work, we explore five dimensions of meaningfulness: task integrity, skill cultivation, task significance, autonomy, and belongingness. We emphasize the dual impacts of GenAI, highlighting positive potential for democratization and task consolidation in creative work, alongside negative threats of deskilling, autonomy erosion, and worker isolation. We outline structural implications of our analysis, including the shift of creative practice from creation to curation, the emergence of a penalty for AI use, and rising professional precarity. We conclude by arguing that accurate ethical assessment requires recognizing the complex interdependencies between these dimensions, as the various impacts of AI can cascade, reinforce, and compensate for one another.

Much Large Language Model (LLM) use is happening undisclosed. This is troubling because the undisclosed use of LLMs to mediate interpersonal communication can be a morally objectionable kind of deception. It is morally objectionable when the intentional failure to disclose LLM use deprives others of valuable information they need for their epistemic appraisal of, inter alia, another’s authentic competencies. In this paper, we provide an analysis of deception in the context of undisclosed LLM use and argue that in some cases this amounts to an ethically salient epistemic wrongdoing.

The flow state has historically been a source of mystery and, at times, mysticism. Whereas some accounts of flow allude to the flowing individual’s conscious absorption and focus, others imply that the individual is, in fact, not conscious. If we take this latter model seriously, our intuition that those in flow ought to be creditable for their acts becomes deeply threatened. However, there is good reason to believe that this mindless account of flow is wrong. Recent work in theoretical cognitive science suggests that flow is an exhibition of bodily minded skill in which consciousness plays a central part. Although this account might salvage more creditability for the minded flowing individual than their mindless counterpart, under a recent axiological framework, it remains ambiguous just how creditable such minded individuals emerge, insofar as the taxonomy fails to cover the role played by subdoxastic intentions and desires in skilful activity. We thus propose a refinement of the framework, which accounts for how these flowing individuals are just as intentional, agentive, skilful, and thus creditable as any non-flowing counterpart who achieves the same material outcome.

Much of the philosophical discussion of video game ethics is dominated by the literature on the Gamer's Dilemma, which forces us to focus on the ethics of certain forms of extreme virtual content in video games, such as virtual murder or molestation. While a focus on the ethics of video game content is important, we argue that scrutinizing the ethics of video game systems is needed to properly capture the full range of ethical concerns raised by video games. Drawing on a distinction between intravirtual and extravirtual effects, we identify ethical issues with video game content and, by linking to the dark patterns literature, video game systems. To illustrate our view, we give examples of how a game can appear to have morally objectionable content without the game being, at least clearly, morally objectionable, and how a game can appear to be morally unobjectionable despite having morally objectionable systems.

Artificial moral patients (or AMPs) are those things successfully made to resemble moral patients, but are not. They are artificial both in the sense that they are made by us (artefacts), and that they are not a real instance of what they are made to resemble (artifice). ChatGPT, sex dolls, social robots, and non-player characters are all examples of AMPs. As these technologies start to resemble humans with greater accuracy the question as to how we should treat them becomes increasingly important. We consider whether work on the Gamer's Dilemma, a puzzle concerning virtual wrongdoings, may provide a useful framework for addressing this question.

Sometimes actions that are (morally) impermissible in the actual world also seem impermissible in virtual worlds. For example, rape is impermissible in the actual world, and it also seems impermissible to direct a videogame character to rape another in a virtual world. But sometimes actions that are impermissible in the actual world seem permissible in virtual worlds. For example, stealing is impermissible in the actual world, but it may seem permissible to direct your video game character to steal another character’s possessions in a virtual world. This asymmetry has complicated the task of finding the line between permissible and impermissible gameplay. So, how should we play video games while this line remains unclear? Is there a way of playing games that ensures our actions are permissible? In this paper we consider a promising moral principle that might guarantee permissible gameplay.

I argue that if we have a moral obligation to preserve memorials to the dead (Stokes, 2015, 2021), then we ought to do so stably. I introduce the concept of stable preservation to capture high-fidelity and respectful forms of memorial preservation. I consider the ontological status of virtual memorials and argue that while they are ontologically equivalent to non-virtual memorials, and therefore resisting them on ontological grounds is mistaken, we may be right to resist an endorsement of some virtual memorials which afford unstable forms of preservation, to the extent that a moral obligation to preserve is undermined by instability.

We argue for the existence of a moral dilemma– the ‘Puzzle of Lab-Grown Meat’– which challenges those who would endorse the moral permissibility of eating lab-grown meat, such as lab-grown chicken. The puzzle is that it is unclear why the moral permissibility of eating lab-grown meat should not extend to all lab-grown meat, such as white rhino or human, yet intuitively, we consider such meat morally impermissible to consume. To reject this challenge forces an endorsement of one of two implausibly strong positions: either that all lab-grown meat is morally impermissible to eat or that all lab-grown meat is morally permissible to eat. To accept this challenge, is to attempt to solve the puzzle by providing a morally relevant distinction between ‘fair-game’ and ‘off-limits’ lab-grown meat. We consider a range of solutions but argue that each fails to solve the puzzle.

We argue for the existence of a moral dilemma– the ‘Puzzle of Lab-Grown Meat’– which challenges those who would endorse the moral permissibility of eating lab-grown meat, such as lab-grown chicken. The puzzle is that it is unclear why the moral permissibility of eating lab-grown meat should not extend to all lab-grown meat, such as white rhino or human, yet intuitively, we consider such meat morally impermissible to consume. To reject this challenge forces an endorsement of one of two implausibly strong positions: either that all lab-grown meat is morally impermissible to eat or that all lab-grown meat is morally permissible to eat. To accept this challenge, is to attempt to solve the puzzle by providing a morally relevant distinction between ‘fair-game’ and ‘off-limits’ lab-grown meat. We consider a range of solutions but argue that each fails to solve the puzzle.

Coghlan and Cox (Between death and suffering: Resolving the gamer’s dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology) offer a new resolution to the Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck, The Gamer’s Dilemma. Ethics and Information Technology). They argue that, while it is fitting for a person committing virtual child molestation to feel self-repugnance, it is not fitting for a person committing virtual murder to feel the same, and the fittingness of this feeling indicates each act’s moral permissibility. The aim of this paper is to determine whether this resolution – the repugnant resolution – successfully resolves the Gamer’s Dilemma. We argue that it does not.

The Gamer’s Dilemma is based on the intuitions that in single-player video games fictional acts of murder are seen as morally acceptable whereas fictional acts of sexual assault are seen as morally unacceptable. Recently, it has been suggested that these intuitions may apply across different forms of media as part of a broader Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. This study aims to empirically explore this issue by determining whether fictional murder is seen as more morally acceptable than fictional sexual assault across different media types, and whether audio-visuality and the degree of agency afforded by the medium influences these judgments. An experimental survey study was developed where participants responded to imaginary fictional scenarios as part of a 2 (engages with fictional murder or fictional sexual assault) X 2 (in a high or low agency) X 2 (audio-visual or non-audio-visual medium) factorial design. It was found that fictional murder was seen to be more morally acceptable than fictional sexual assault across all media types, providing empirical support for the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. It was also found that the audio-visuality and degree of agency influenced judgments of moral acceptability.

The Gamer’s Dilemma challenges us to justify the moral difference between enacting virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. The Dilemma relies for its argumentative force on the claim that there is an intuitive moral difference between these acts, with the former intuited as morally acceptable and the latter as morally unacceptable. However, there has been no empirical investigation of these claims. To explore these issues, we developed an experimental survey study in which participants were asked to reflect on imaginary video game scenarios as part of a 2 (undertake virtual murder or molestation) X 2 (against an adult or child) X 2 (in a high or low realism virtual environment) factorial design. We found that there was a significant difference between people’s views about virtual murder and virtual molestation. Whether the virtual act was performed against an adult or child was non-significant in most conditions, whereas whether it was performed in a high or low realism virtual environment was significant in most conditions. Gender did not impact these results, whereas perceived gaming experience, hours of video game play per week, and integrity did. These results provide an empirical grounding for future discussions of the Gamer's Dilemma.

Debate over the normativity of virtual phenomena is now widespread in the philosophical literature, taking place in roughly two distinct but related camps. The first considers the relevant problems to be within the scope of applied ethics, where the general methodological program is to square the intuitive (im)permissibility of virtual wrongdoings with moral accounts that justify their (im)permissibility. The second camp approaches the normativity of virtual wrongdoings as a metaphysical debate. This is done by disambiguating the ‘virtual’ character of ‘virtual wrongdoings’. Doing so is supposed to provide illuminating ontological distinctions that inform ethical aspects of the debate. We argue that each approach faces its own set of issues, and as a result, motivates consideration of an alternative. The alternative we suggest turns inquiry concerning the normativity of virtual wrongdoings into a distinctively conceptual question. Rather than asking whether some action is right or wrong, or whether some virtual phenomenon counts as a particular action at all, we argue that research into the normativity of virtual wrongdoings may be guided by reflecting on whether a concept that originated and developed within a non-virtual context should be exported into a foreign virtual domain. We consider this approach and several objections.

The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness resolution to this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox.

Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area.