Friday 3 October, 2008

Durring my second Session playing GTA-SA, I focused on applying different moral theories to the missions I played. The first mission was "Drive By" where I had to drive my gang past some "Balla's" and gun them down. At first, this seems morally wrong. Under Kantianism, that would be true, you would not want a universal rule saying its ok to gun down people if they are in a different gang. The Utilitarian approach would also back this up, because you gun down 16 people who would get alot of unhappiness from dying, and only the 4 of us get happiness for killing them, the unhappiness out weights the happiness.

This situation almost resembles the Prisoners Delema, we can choose to kill them or not, and they have the same choice. If we choose to not kill them and they choose the same, we all live, but if we choose to not kill and they choose to kill we end up dead. If we decide to kill and they decide kill, we have an advantage of surprise, and if they choose to not kill, we live and they die. This is a lot like Hobbes "state of nature". So since there is no "contract" between the two gangs, the right thing to do is look out for ourselves, and choose to kill them.

The other mission I did was Sweets Girl. The objective was to rescue Sweet and his girl from some thugs. Analyzing under Kantianism seems to deem this ok, it would be a good universal rule to come to the aid of friends. Looking deeper it falls apart with the rule, it is ok to kill to save our friends. This rule could not be adopted universally because it is self defeating, If we kill someone to save our friend, that persons friends would try to kill us to save him, so we all end up killing each other. Utilitarianism could consider this mission morally correct depending on the sides. If I need to kill one or two people with no family to save 2 of my friends which have families, my side would have more happiness for the saving of them then the two dead people would unhappiness. But this could be reversed, If there are 6 people who will die, like in the mission and only 2 people would get happiness from my completing the mission, then there is more unhappiness created by killing then happiness. then there is the argument that dead people would not have any unhappiness, and the consequences saving my friends would not have any unhappiness.

Your analysis from the perspectives of the moral philosophies is well done. You really poked holes in the logic guiding the motives of CJ, specifically in your Kant example. However, if this situation is applied to real like not only are the parties involved affected but in a situation like this CJ would have also have to think about people indirectly affected by his actions, like his victim's family and friends.