Rethinking Harm to Virtual Characters: Maxims, Indirect Duty, and Dignity in a Kantian Framework

This paper focuses on contemporary controversies surrounding depictions of violations against virtual characters, taking as its point of entry the claim that “virtual characters have no rights, therefore depictions of violating them are not problematic.” It argues that the core issue is not whether virtual characters possess rights, but how the meanings conveyed by such depictions act upon human beings. Drawing on Kantian philosophy, the paper examines the applicability of “indirect duties to animals” to contemporary “virtual characters,” and further proposes that, compared with animals—which Kant regarded as “analogues of humanity”—virtual characters, due to their verisimilitude, can on this basis be regarded as “simulacra of personhood.” Two empirical studies in cognitive science are cited to support this claim. The paper then integrates Kantian and modern social conceptions of “dignity,” arguing that although virtual characters do not possess “dignity” in Kant’s sense, they can nevertheless be normatively presumed to exhibit an internal logic isomorphic to dignity. On this basis, the paper contends that violations against virtual characters manifest as a “downgrading” of the quasi-personhood status they present, and, in a normative sense, reveal that “human dignity” can be detached from “the human.” The paper concludes with the metaphor of the “Ring of Gyges,” suggesting that contemporary virtual space functions like the mythical ring of invisibility.