D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

[Umbran]

I've heard that particular counterargument before, and I'll admit it's a compelling one. I've thought a lot about it, and come to the conclusion that - even overlooking the difference between morality and justice - there is a deontological difference between stabbing someone and stumbling and accidentally cutting them.

In the former act, you're violating the negative duties (e.g. do not perform acts of harm). The latter act, however, is the person coming to harm as the result of circumstance, the same as if a tree branch just happened to break off when they're under it; it's not, from a moral standpoint, considered to be an action on your part.

To put it another way, I think that the idea of saying that the two scenarios are equivalent is a consequentialist argument (e.g. "the results of what happened are that the person was stabbed; how they ended up stabbed is immaterial") rather than a deontological one.

Yes, but you've largely missed my point.

I said you won't get broad agreement on that. However much *YOU* may have adopted a deontological structure for your personal ethics, for the most part the rest of the world is not purist. If you are trying to decide for yourself if you consider an act to be ethical*, you may, of course, use whatever framework you wish**. When you're trying to decide if someone else will think it is ethical, you must use their framework, not your own.

And if you're somehow trying to prove that your framework is the One True Ethics... well, that's close enough to religion as makes no odds, and we should stop now.

...I was attempting (poorly, I realize now) to say "whether the consequences are those that were deliberately sought, or came about as an unexpected result, is irrelevant, because we're focusing on the act itself and not the consequences."

Er, does that not depend upon what rules/duties your particular deontological system uses? If your (admittedly oversimplified) rule, for example, is "Do no harm," then sure as anything the consequences matter, as "harm" is a consequence of an action! Some deontological philosophers will hold that intent and consequences don't matter, others will say they do.

Me, I'm not a purist. I'm not going to just accept a particular set of rules - I'll question them. If the consequences to other people are not themselves part of the basis for your rules, well, then I'm not really interested in them.



*I am noting, but not addressing, the question of whether morals and ethics are actually equivalent - for now, take the words in whichever way suits.
** Not precisely true - what with that whole "living in a society, and have to get along with everyone else" thing.

 

[Dragoslav]

All right, 18-page thread on sensitive contemporary issue. LET'S GO!

Last I checked, the heterosexual orientation was referenced very commonly in D&D products. NPCs often have consorts, love interests or spouses, who are always the opposite sex.

"Sexual orientation" is a relatively recent psychological term that wouldn't have had any bearing on the medieval, albeit fantastic, societies depicted in D&D settings. Having a female NPC who's married to a man or a male NPC who has a female lover doesn't tell you "this character is straight:" It doesn't say anything more about the character than "this NPC is married to a man" or "this NPC enjoys having sex with women." Maybe the married woman has a female lover in secret, or maybe the male NPC also has a lover who is male. If you want to talk about sexual orientation, just giving a character an opposite-sex lover doesn't imply that they're straight; they could be bisexual. In reality, people did (and sometimes still do) marry people of the socially-accepted sex even though they enjoy or prefer people of their same sex for a variety of reasons including religious stigma or societal duty (the duty of producing the next generation of children).

I have no problem if WOTC wants to present a variety of different skin tones in character artwork--I think it would be a good thing. But the difference here between skin color and sexuality is that you can't say "Actually, the white paladin on page 142 is actually black." But you could certainly say "Actually, the dragonborn on page 38 is gay."

So, while you can make the case that depicting characters of only one sex or skin color promotes inequality (I would disagree, by the way), you can't make the same argument about characters' sexuality. As I showed above, just having a character with an opposite-sex lover/spouse doesn't scream, "This character is STRAIGHT. Okay? STRAIGHT. Look at how STRAIGHT this character is."

Actually, going back to the issue of whether talking about "sexual orientation" is appropriate for this kind of setting, it's perfectly feasible to consider that, in a fantasy world with a polytheistic, fantasy religion, i.e. without the same religious doctrine as in real history, people wouldn't develop the desire to come up with labels on sexual orientation. People would just have sex with whichever sex they desired, and people wouldn't come up with labels to apply to those with "abnormal" sexual preferences.

 

[Alzrius]

Yes, but you've largely missed my point.

I said you won't get broad agreement on that. However much *YOU* may have adopted a deontological structure for your personal ethics, for the most part the rest of the world is not purist. If you are trying to decide for yourself if you consider an act to be ethical*, you may, of course, use whatever framework you wish**.

If I'm understanding correctly that your point is that I'm attempting to form a broad consensus, then I suppose that I did miss it. That is, however, because I'm not concerned with that. As I stated previously, I find value in the debate itself for my own personal edification.

When you're trying to decide if someone else will think it is ethical, you must use their framework, not your own.

I find myself in disagreement here. That's not because of any attempt to suggest that my (or anyone's) ethical framework is somehow superior, but because people evaluate the morality of themselves, others, and the world in their own way. You are certainly entitled to your opinion on the morality of someone else's actions, and as an extension of that is that you may use your own moral framework to make that determination.

This isn't to suggest that trying to see things from someone else's perspective isn't a good thing to do; it is. Just that not doing so is not, in and of itself, morally wrong.

And if you're somehow trying to prove that your framework is the One True Ethics... well, that's close enough to religion as makes no odds, and we should stop now.

I want to make it very clear that I'm not doing that. If at any point in time my posts have come across that way, I apologize.

Er, does that not depend upon what rules/duties your particular deontological system uses?

The nature of what constitutes duties and the other rules of any given deontological system will, I believe, be defined personally. I was attempting to draw a distinction between the act itself and the act's repercussions (which, not being part of the act, are therefore not part of a deontological moral evaluation, as I understand it).

If your (admittedly oversimplified) rule, for example, is "Do no harm," then sure as anything the consequences matter, as "harm" is a consequence of an action! Some deontological philosophers will hold that intent and consequences don't matter, others will say they do.

I think that there's a distinction to be made here, as the instance of "harm" in "do no harm" is characterized as an action (e.g. something you do), rather than as a consequence (e.g. something that's happened as a result of what's done). A doctor who follows the "do no harm" rule, and performs a surgery that's unsuccessful and the patient dies, has not done anything immoral, whereas someone who murders someone else has definitely violated the "do no harm" rule. That's the difference in the act itself (surgery vs. murder).

That said, I don't disagree that there are some schools of thought for deontological ethics that do take some degree of intent into account, from what I understand. I'm simply stating my opinion on the matter of determining morality; I'm not trying to express any sort of absolute - I started debating this because I was unsettled by the presence of what I read as absolutist statements regarding that the absence of virtue in an act always makes it an immoral act.

Me, I'm not a purist. I'm not going to just accept a particular set of rules - I'll question them. If the consequences to other people are not themselves part of the basis for your rules, well, then I'm not really interested in them.

I'll also question rules, hence why I'm having the discussion - because I'm questioning the basis for moral determination that I see other people making. The issue of consequences isn't unimportant, it's just that it's not (I believe) relevant to determining if you should undertake an action based on a moral evaluation of that action.

The Fat Man variant of the Trolley Problem is a thought experiment that, to me, shows the problem with making consequences an important part of the equation. Consequences focus more on how many people survive, rather than the morality of sacrificing someone else without their knowledge or consent to save others.

If your rules tell you that it's morally right to kill someone else to save several other people, then I'm not interested in them.

 

[Dausuul]

Guys, can we maybe move the philosophical debate to another thread? Or at least bring it back to the topic at hand?

"Sexual orientation" is a relatively recent psychological term that wouldn't have had any bearing on the medieval, albeit fantastic, societies depicted in D&D settings. Having a female NPC who's married to a man or a male NPC who has a female lover doesn't tell you "this character is straight:" It doesn't say anything more about the character than "this NPC is married to a man" or "this NPC enjoys having sex with women." Maybe the married woman has a female lover in secret, or maybe the male NPC also has a lover who is male. If you want to talk about sexual orientation, just giving a character an opposite-sex lover doesn't imply that they're straight; they could be bisexual. In reality, people did (and sometimes still do) marry people of the socially-accepted sex even though they enjoy or prefer people of their same sex for a variety of reasons including religious stigma or societal duty (the duty of producing the next generation of children).

You can make up any backstory you like, but come on. When the only information available about a fictional woman's romantic life is that she's married to a man, the clear implication is that she's heterosexual. If she's a closeted lesbian with a female lover, whose marriage is just for the sake of appearances and/or reproduction, that's an important detail of the character and it should be spelled out in the text. Remember, these characters are not real people with an independent existence that can be examined. Their existence is confined to the fictional details we are given, and what can be inferred from those details.

Besides, why are there no gay or lesbian couples? All questions of diversity aside, that ought to screw up verisimilitude for anybody. Even if the fictional society is extremely homophobic (and if all the fictional societies in D&D fit this description, that's another problem), there will still be plenty of same-sex couples around. They'll keep it quiet, but the omniscient narrator of a sourcebook can see into any closet no matter how deep.

I have no problem if WOTC wants to present a variety of different skin tones in character artwork--I think it would be a good thing. But the difference here between skin color and sexuality is that you can't say "Actually, the white paladin on page 142 is actually black."

Sure you can. This is a game with spells like alter self and items like the hat of disguise. It's the easiest thing in the world. The apparent white male paladin could be a black woman for all we know. Heck, he could be a robot (excuse me, "warforged"). But again, this is inventing a backstory that is neither stated nor implied in the material.

 

[Nellisir]

Changing the campaign world for the sake of making it politically correct is not legitimate world building, nor does it make the plot or world setting richer and more interesting.

This presumes at least two things: one, that there is a campaign world to be changed, and since we're talking about what WotC does in the future, that's not the case; and two, that race somehow matters in terms of motivation, culture, etc, etc, - that a non-white race would somehow act differently or be less "legitimate". Personally, I find it annoying that Asian settings & rulebooks always depict humans as asian. Are redheads less effective samurai? Monks/ninja/samurai = asian people isn't "legitimate", it's just what we've seen around us.

(and yes, I was happy to see a non-asian monk in WotC's 3e PH).

 

[bogmad]

The question of trying to figure out the morality of something is, I believe, based on the action that is undertaken, rather than the (impossible to ascertain) intent, or the (impossible to pre-evaluate) consequences.

Then that's what you'd need to convince me of. I'm not certain intent is impossible to ascertain or infer. I'm also not convinced that all consequences are impossible to pre-evaluate, especially when circumstances are taken into concern.

 

[bogmad]

I think that there's a distinction to be made here, as the instance of "harm" in "do no harm" is characterized as an action (e.g. something you do), rather than as a consequence (e.g. something that's happened as a result of what's done). A doctor who follows the "do no harm" rule, and performs a surgery that's unsuccessful and the patient dies, has not done anything immoral, whereas someone who murders someone else has definitely violated the "do no harm" rule. That's the difference in the act itself (surgery vs. murder).

But if that same doctor is sitting there with a guy who's bleeding to death, and it's in his ability to go in and save that guy from dying, does his inaction at that point cause harm?

Wait. Weren't we supposed to be talking about gay elves or something?

 

[Gryph]

I cannot agree that your average RPG writer has the chops to write what he doesn't know though. I'd rather have no gay characters than caricatures of gay characters.
And I have no hope that the oversexualization of the female body will stop in D&D. I mean the number one rule of drawing females for all of D&D has been, "if it's female, it has massive jugs". Look at 4E, they put boobs on stones!

Do you really think that the very nature of what it is to love or desire or lust after someone is different because the gender of the person so loved or desired is male rather than female?

 

[Alzrius]

Then that's what you'd need to convince me of. I'm not certain intent is impossible to ascertain or infer. I'm also not convinced that all consequences are impossible to pre-evaluate, especially when circumstances are taken into concern.

Well, I believe that intent is impossible to truly ascertain because you can't know what another person is thinking/feeling when they do something; they have to tell you, and even then, how do you know they're not lying? Heck, to hear some people say it, the influence of subconscious factors is such that even the person may not know what their own intent is.

Insofar as consequences are concerned, I think that boils down to evaluating likelihoods. Something can be exceptionally likely, but is it ever an absolute certainty (please note that I'm referring to consequences that have an impact on other people; you can be certain that, presuming you're on the Earth's surface, if you drop something it will fall)? I'm of the opinion that quite often, while you can predict things like this on a larger scale (e.g. what "most" of the people are likely to do, and then figure out how many actually did), it's harder on an individual level, simply because we can't predict how people will react to things with complete certainty.

But if that same doctor is sitting there with a guy who's bleeding to death, and it's in his ability to go in and save that guy from dying, does his inaction at that point cause harm?

In and of itself, I would say no. However, I would posit that the doctor would also have a duty (e.g. the second tier of deontological ethics; something that is good if you do it, and bad if you do not) that says "help the people in your immediate area that require medical assistance." Based on that, his inaction is immoral, since by not fulfilling a duty, he's acted immorally.

Wait. Weren't we supposed to be talking about gay elves or something?

Aren't those wood elves?

 

[Umbran]

The Fat Man variant of the Trolley Problem is a thought experiment that, to me, shows the problem with making consequences an important part of the equation. Consequences focus more on how many people survive, rather than the morality of sacrificing someone else without their knowledge or consent to save others.

Yes, well, the Fat Man variant of the Trolley Problem is a thought experiment that, to me, shows the basic problem of formalized ethical philosophy. It creates a highly unrealistic situation, positing an issue that is unlikely to exist in the real world with an unrealistic restriction of options, and implies that there is, in fact, a right answer and a wrong answer that you can come to in split seconds of ethical consideration. As opposed to recognizing that we live in a non-ideal world that sometimes kinda sucks in that it doesn't always have digital right and wrong answers.

The Fat Man is, in reality, just another Kobyashi Maru. Which is fine, except that the Kobyashi Maru isn't about finding the right answer, but is instead about discovering how you cope with there not being a right answer!