A Word on Contemporary Philosophy

Throughout this class you may have been wondering what philosophers are doing today. We’ve studied ancient Greeks and ancient Chinese and early 20th century French, but what about current thinkers? Well, the answer is that philosophy has become quite specialized, although the NY Times did report an increase in philosophy majors (because philosophy, in some sense, prepares you for anything due to its general nature, it is valued by many employers).

There are certainly some exciting developments, particularly in very recent years. There is something called “experimental philosophy” which tries to come to conclusions about various pieces of information through surveys and other methods. Philosophy of science has increased in popularity—as new technologies, medical practices (etc.) are developed, philosophers of science are there to think about the implications. Other philosophers are studying games, and I’m one of them. (I am a co-writer on the blog Philosophy of Video Games and I've edited a couple of books on the subject as you'll see at the end of the lecture.)

Philosophy and Games

When most people think of games, they think of activities that people engage in for fun. In fact, one might associate the phrase “not serious” with games. But try telling a Charger’s fan that who wins the Sunday game is unimportant or frivolous. Games are everywhere, from Tetris to Poker to Beer Pong to World of Warcraft, and there is evidence of antiquated human societies playing games as far back as 3000 years.

So what can games teach us about human nature? How can we combine games and philosophy? Some of you might be thinking, why should we combine games and philosophy? Games are frivolous activities, right? And philosophy is a serious one? Well first of all, whether games are frivolous and philosophy is serious are two assertions that are opened to debate. And second of all, we use philosophy to analyze all sorts of things that might be considered mere entertainment—movies, books, plays—so why not add games to the list? Furthermore, it’s not as though game players treat games as mere entertainment, as attested to by any of the numerous forums or websites online devoted to discussion of particular games.

But if you don’t believe me, just listen to Plato from one of his lesser known works The Laws: “Man is God’s plaything, and that is the best part of him… What, then, will be the right way to live? A man should spend his whole life at play… Life must be lived as play, playing certain games…”

Before moving on, take a minute to play PacMan to the right, or a more difficult game of deduction, Mastermind (Basic rules of Mastermind: you are trying to guess a pattern that is hidden at the top. Each guess you make gives you clues. If you see a white peg on the right, that means that you guessed one of the colors right, but you don't know which one. If you see a black peg on the right, it means you guessed a color and place right, but you don't know which color and place.) Now think about everything you experience as you read the rest of the lecture.

The Magic Circle

One of the best ways to begin our philosophical analysis of games is with a concept called The Magic Circle.  Basically, being in a game’s magic circle means that you are following the rules of the game and that you have a certain mindset. You are involved, part of the game. Imagine that a golfer is about to make a putt, but instead of putting he picks up the golf ball and drops it in the hole. The golfer here is not in the magic circle. He is not playing by the rules and so he would be disqualified. Make sense? A serious poker player looking down at her cards very seriously while also watching the expressions of other players for tells is in the magic circle. If you are in the magic circle, you do not question the rules. You don’t ask why four downs constitute a turnover in football; you simply accept it. Take a look at the image of the kids on the monkey bars (below) and let’s assume they’re playing “Pirate” as kids do. These kids are in their own magic circle, where the grass is water and the monkey bars themselves are a pirate ship.

In the magic circle, there are special meanings that don’t exist in the real world. In a book called Rules of Play, the authors, Salen and Zimmerman, discuss the magic circle: “As a player steps in and out of a game, he or she is crossing that boundary—or frame—that defines the game in time and space… The fact that the magic circle is just that—a circle—is an important feature of this concept. As a closed circle, the space it circumscribes is closed and separate from the real world.” This is one explanation for why games are so appealing to so many people. Games offer a separate world with separate, distinct rules.

Types of Play

With so many different types of games, one might wonder how they can be categorized. Well, there have been a number of attempts to categorize games. However, we're going to keep it simple here.

One categorization puts all games on a continuum between Ludus and Paidia. So imagine a line with ludus at one end, and paidia on the other (below). Any games that are on the line toward the ludus end are more ordered with more rules. Any games that are on the line toward the paidia end are less ordered with less rules. And of course there are a good amount of games in between with a good mixture of rules and chaos. So let’s imagine a little kid running around and playing “airplane” by sticking his arms out and spinning. Where does this activity fit in? Well, because it has so few rules, it is right at the Paidia end. Now imagine two people playing Chess, a complicated, very ordered game. Clearly, Chess players are right up next to ludus.

Ludus (more rules) --------------------------------------------------Paidia (less rules)

Another type of play that has been identified is meaningful play. Meaningful play occurs when there is a direct relation between your efforts in a given game and your ability to influence it. Have you ever played a game that you got sick of right away? Maybe it was too hard to learn, or maybe it was boring, or both. Chances are, there was no or little meaningful play involved. Meaningful play occurs when you as a player feel like you can change things in the game as a result of your work—for example when a baseball player works on his swing over and over until he sees an increase in his batting average. In fact, game designers of all kinds are aware of meaningful play and when they design games they try to combine the right elements to create the best experience for the player. Note that games of chance are often not meaningful, which is why they can get boring easily.

Emergent play is another type of play. It’s what it sounds like, when something emerges from an existing game. The most common example is fighting in hockey. How did this start? Why is it allowed to continue for so long by the referees? Emergent play happens when an element of a game creates its own sort of game.

Video Games

Well, we’ve touched on them a bit, but now it’s time to look in more detail at video games. How are video games different than other games? Why does the phrase itself cause different associations, sometimes negative ones? The typical criticism of violence against video games ignores, among other things, the fact that there are different types of games, just as there are different types of movies and books. Since they gained popularity in the late 70s and early 80s, as many of us know, video games have spiraled out of control in terms of popularity. What began as arcades and amateur home consoles has evolved into online virtual environments and Nintendo Wiis. Surely such a significant cultural phenomenon deserves at least some philosophical attention.

One important difference between a video game and most other games is a screen. Video games take place in an onscreen world. Players serve as mediators between the real world we live in and the onscreen world of any given video game. Now, you might be thinking, but movies and TV shows also take place on a screen, so what’s the difference? Why are video games special?

Well, video games are special because of the avatar. The avatar is the onscreen character controlled by the player. In PacMan, for instance, the avatar is the little yellow character that eats the pellets and runs from the ghosts. In any game, the avatar is the player’s means of interacting with the onscreen world. And now we see how video games are different from movies or TV shows: video games are interactive. Players have some control over the onscreen world, whereas in a movie they do not.

The Avatar and Personal Identity

Now, some interesting philosophical questions arise because of the avatar, but let’s take a step back first. When we studied David Hume, we learned a little bit about personal identity. Personal identity is an area of philosophy that asks, how is it that you are the same person from one point in time to the next? If the answer seems obvious, you haven’t thought about it enough. Clearly you look very different now than you did when you were five years old. Not only that, but your body has more mass. So if you’ve changed so much since you were five, what makes you the same person? It can’t be your body, can it? Your body has changed. Furthermore, even as adults we know our cells regenerate fully every 7 years. So what is it that makes you the same person? Your memories? Your mind? Your genes? Your soul? Now you can see how difficult it really is to answer this question. And any answer you give will raise additional questions.

David Hume, you might remember, said that there is no self. Not only are our bodies constantly changing, but our mind is too. Hume said that we never have a direct impression of anything we can call a “self,” all we have are fleeting perceptions (review the Hume lecture if necessary). So Hume’s answer to what makes us the same person from one time to another is: nothing, we are not the same from one time to another, we are constantly changing.

Now think about the avatar again, the onscreen character controlled by the player. When you play a video game, you control the avatar, but is the avatar you? Is it an extension of who you are? How are you as a player and the avatar connected? Maybe you think these are ridiculous questions. Well, consider the way video game players talk to each other. Let’s say two friends, call them Mark and Jane, are playing a two player video game against each other and Jane says, “Hah! I just killed you!” It seems that we can’t take this literally. What Jane means is that she killed Mark’s avatar, not that she killed Mark. Also, who does the “I” refer to in Jane’s statement? We have to wonder why players naturally say these kinds of things. They identify with the avatar. Is it because they have extended their self onto the avatar? Something else to consider here is the way players seem to give personality to an avatar. In a role playing game, for instance, some players are very thorough—they get every item, defeat every enemy, etc.—and other players are more reckless.

Two contemporary philosophers, David Chalmers and Andy Clark, actually proposed an idea they called The Extended Mind Hypothesis. It is their contention that the self exists, but that it is vague or unclear. According to them the self is vague in both space and time. We have already seen, through Hume, how the self is vague in time (for Hume it’s so vague that it doesn’t exist). But the relationship between the player’s avatar and the player herself in video games seems to show us that the self is vague in space also. We don’t know where our self begins and the avatar ends or vice versa. This is why players refer to themselves as “I” when they are controlling an onscreen avatar. The self extends into space around us, into the things we interact with and control. This idea is seriously illuminated by the nature of video games.Of course, there are certainly other interpretations. What's yours?

Young and Unexplored Ideas

Well that concludes our foray into games and philosophy. We certainly haven’t covered everything and before the lecture is closed out I want to mention a couple of things in case anyone is interested.

When I tell people that one of my areas of study is games, many assume that games are strictly for men. But in my experience this isn’t true. Whatever the case, not much has been said about women and gaming, and there is probably a lot that could be. In my edited book The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy, there is a co-authored piece that deals with role playing games and feminism. There is also a chapter in that book that deals with playing as Nietzsche’s Overman (playing beyond good and evil). My more recent edited book, World of Warcraft and Philosophy, deals with online gaming and philosophy (as you can guess). There also has not been much work done in terms of analyzing other types of games philosophically in more detail—such as board games.

Maybe games and philosophy is not your thing. As I pointed out at the beginning of the lecture, there are other recent developments in philosophy. If you are interested in going further, you can, of course, do some of your own research. Philosophy is as relevant in our technologically driven society as it ever was.