The repugnant resolution: has Coghlan & Cox resolved the Gamer’s Dilemma?

Abstract 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.