Pleasurably Regarding the Pain of Fictional Others Aaron Smuts (Rhode Island College – [email protected] – http://www.aaronsmuts.com) General Question: Is it morally bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? Thesis: Yes. It is intrinsically morally bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, and future) or merely imagined. Significance: 1) Independent moral significance; 2) Art and Morality Qualifications Q1. I am only concerned with suffering, or pain above a non-trivial threshold. ex. soccer balls, wood chippers, daffy duck, and stooges Q2. I will focus on the most unambiguous case: malicious pleasure. Q3. I am not defending a deontic claim (e.g. "right" or "wrong"). Support: Three Thought Experiments TE1. Banana Peel We can't account for the moral badness of malicious pleasure in terms of its welfare impact. i. Undiscovered malicious pleasure has no welfare impact on the injured. ii. Malicious pleasure is not intrinsically prudential bad for the observer. - Even if it were, the prudential badness would have to stem from the moral badness. TE2. Moore's Universe of Cruel Though "If we then consider what judgment we should pass upon a universe which consisted solely of minds thus occupied [with thoughts of cruelty], without the smallest hope that there would ever exist in it the smallest consciousness of any object other than those proper to these passions, or any feeling directed to any such object, I think that we cannot avoid the conclusion that the existence of such a universe would be a far worse evil than the existence of none at all." (Moore, PE sec. 125) TE3. Two Worlds Autonomous Fantasy Objection Two Types of Fantasy (Christopher Cherry, "The Inward and the Outward"): F1. Surrogate Fantasy F2. Autonomous Fantasy: ex. one might enjoy rape fantasies but not want to rape or witness an actual rape Four Kinds of Imagining (Bernard Williams, "Imagination and the Self") I1.*as a spectator not in the imagined world, I2. as an actor in the imagined world doing things, I3. as an outside observer watching oneself do things, and I4. as inhabiting the sphere of action, but merely observing. Harmless Objection (= mental statism + welfarism) Welfare (aka well-being, prudential value) = what makes a life good for the one who lives it. Mental Statism = the sole bearers of intrinsic prudential value are subjective mental states. Welfarism = the ultimate source of all moral value, obligations, or reasons is welfare. [3 forms: good, right, reasons] Reply to the Autonomous Fantasy Objection Ontological status is irrelevant. ex. falsely reported accident; cruel subject enjoying a Milgram Shock Experiment (Hurka, VVV p.163) Belief in the existence of the object is not required for the pleasure to be evil. ex. Universe of Cruel Though and Two Worlds. Reply to the Harmless Objection I accept mental statism and reject welfarism. Three objections to welfarism: OW1: What is a morally good distribution of welfare? We need another good, such as justice. OW2: It makes it hard to account for what's wrong with undiscovered lies and broken deathbed promises. OW3: Other first-order goods matter, such as autonomy, achievement, and knowledge. ex. Two Treatments [for an animal rights advocate] (Sen, "Well-Being, Agency, and Freedom") American Society for Aesthetics, Eastern Division – 4/21/2012