The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia

The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia is a philosophical investigation of games by Bernard Suits. It is a dense, and, at times, difficult read. So, it is more for the stout-hearted, philosophically inclined reader, than it is for the casual reader. Nonetheless, it does make some very important points. So, I will summarize it here, very briefly, and emphasize a couple of its most dramatic contributions.

The book is structured around a very different interpretation of Aesop's Fable The Grasshopper and the Ant. In the original Aesop's Fable the grasshopper plays when the weather is nice while the ant works putting food away for the winter. When winter comes, the ant has plenty of food but the foolhardy grasshopper has nothing because he played all summer. So, the ant survives while the grasshopper starves. In Suit's interpretation, the grasshopper argues that he is merely acting according to his nature and if he did differently he would no longer be the grasshopper.  This was a little difficult to follow and I probably should read it again and wrestle with the ideas a bit more. But, the re-interpretation is not relevant to this post. So, I will keep going.

Along the way in discussing the role of play and games, Suits makes two rather astonishing observations. First, he asks about a utopian world in which people had all their needs met what would people do with their time? He suggests that they would play games. This seems right, on the face of it, as games are entertaining and will fill time not being spent on surviving. He then goes on to suggest that because of this games are the highest good for people. That is, it is the thing they would do if they could do anything they wanted to do. This, then, leads to the observation I made in a previous post that games are the only activity that people do for its own sake. Thus, putting play on a par with happiness as a thing people pursue for no other reason than to achieve it.

The second rather astonishing contribution that Suits makes is that he provides a workable definition of games. You might recall how, in the previous post, Wittgenstein said that games defy definition. The concept of games, according to Wittgenstein is held together by Family Resemblances and there is nothing that all games have in common. However, Suits defines a game as a voluntary attempt to othercome unnecessary obstacles. That seems to be a pretty good definition and one has to ask why Wittgenstein got it wrong while Suits got it right.

The answer, I believe, is that Wittgenstein was looking for a definition based on attributes whereas Suits provided a teleological definition. That is to say that  Wittgenstein was looking for features common to all games whereas Suits defined games in terms of the purpose they serve in our lives. This might even be a part of a larger patterns as we progress from natural science to social science to sciences of the artificial. Categories in natural science tend to be defined by attributes. In social science we see more of a mixture of attribute and teleological definitions. In sciences of the artificial more categories are almost always teleological.

The Metaphysics of Games

If you really dislike philosophy you should skip this post. It is not necessary for understanding subsequent posts and may just confuse you if you do no have philosophical leanings. But, for those who may be interested, I thought I would write a few words about the metaphysics of games.

Perhaps one of the most enduring and perplexing problems in metaphysics arises from the seemingly simple question - how do you know a tree is a tree? The problem here is that we have a specific thing that we assign to a group or category. We use the word "tree" for both the category and the individual instances that populate that category. In metaphysical terms the individual instance is referred to as a particular, and the category is referred to as a universal. In normal conversation we do not distinguish between particulars and universals, as that would just make conversation awkward. But, if we were being precise, the above question would be qualified - how do we know a tree (particular instance) is a tree (member of the universal category).

But, where do these universals come from? And how do we know a particular instance belongs to a category? Are categories defined bottom up based on common attributes? If so how do we select the attributes? Or are categories defined top down based on essences? If so, how do we determine the proper essences? These questions make up one of the most vexing problems in metaphysics known as The Problem of Universals.

Philosophers as far back as Plato and Aristotle have attempted to tackle this problem. In the last century, Ludwig Wittgenstein offered an interesting perspective using a family resemblances analogy and used games as an example category. If you go to a family reunion, you can see that the members of the family share some facial features. But, not everyone has the same set of common features. For example, a few people may have the family nose. Others have the family chin. Perhaps others have the family brow. The family is held together visually by a collection of interlocking facial features but no family member has the full set of common features. According to Wittgenstein, many concepts are held together in the same way.

In the case of games, we see a category held together by family resemblances. Some games have a strategy. Some games have winners and losers. Some games involve competition. And so on. But no game has a full set of common attributes. This assertion that 'games' is a poorly defined category would hold for nearly a century, until Bernard Suits would offer a precise definition of games. We will get to Suits in the next post. But for now we will leave it off by saying that the intellectual foundations of games is anchored deeply in the heart of metaphysics.

Some Thoughts on Casual Play

I finished reading and reviewing the book on Casual Play that I mentioned last week. The author argues his point well that casual players outnumber hard core gamers and that this may represent a revolution of sorts in video game design. However, despite the increasing use of casual games, I don't think hard core games are going anywhere. That is to say that I think this segment of the industry will continue to thrive and continue to grow. At the same time I would also acknowledge that the casual segment may well thrive more and grow faster. I think a couple of analogies are in order to explain this.

The first analogy which I used in the review said that you cannot judge the audience for performing art simply by considering those who attend Broadway plays. There is also an audience for shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and while the later audience may not be as lofty as the former it dwarfs the former in terms of numbers and revenue generation. One end of the market is where the art is advanced. The other end of the market is where it is exploited. Both ends are important to a vital industry. So designers who serve the hard core audience will continue to advance the state of the art while casual game designers will continue to broaden the audience.

The second analog which I mentioned in the review but did not explore was the comparison between hard core gamers versus casual players on one hand and command line users versus those who prefer graphical user interfaces. There is still a use for command line interfaces and there is stil a hard core audience who prefers them. However, graphical user interfaces expands the audience and makes computers available to a large number of people who would never use them if they had to learn how to use the command line. I think this comparison is apt because, overwhelmingly, most potential video game players will not invest the time and intellectual energy required to play hard core games. They will, however, play games that are effortless to play and represent diversion and entertainment.

On one hand it is exciting to see the field of video games grow and expand and become more complex. However, from a research perspective, it becomes increasing more difficult to make any statements that are true for all video games. We may get back to Wittgenstein's family resemblances and see video games as collection of overlapping concepts that do not have any attributes in common across all categories.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (don't even try to pronounce it) has brought these ideas together in a coherent model of optimal experience which he calls Flow. Flow is the experience that one has when engaging in an actvitiy that produces happiness in the moment and enduring happiness. A short introduction to Flow can be found in the Flow article in Wikipedia.

I won't replicate the book or the article here, but will say that a Flow activity has clear and worthy goals, it is challenging but achievable, it provides feedback reflecting progress, it is intrinsically satisfying, and one tends to loose a sense of external things when pursuing a flow activity.

Flow activities take your mind off of what Russell called 'detractors' and allow you to engage in meaningful contributors. They also support Wittgenstein's requirement that you have a sense of purpose in that they contain clear and worthy goals. The notion that they are challenging but achievable while being intrinsically satisfying seems to support Aristotle's view of virtues.

Different activities might produce flow experiences in different people. Some people, for example, find that playing music is a flow experience. I, who am tone deaf, do not find it to be so. However, I do find other things to be flow experiences.

Bringing the conversation back to video games, it is easy to see why video games are so addicting. For many people, they are flow experiences. The have clear goals that are worthy in the mind of the players. More sophisticated games such as World of Warcraft actually have quite complicated goal structures with short and long term goals, conflicting goals, and both implicit and explicit goals. The goals are challenging but achievable. There is feedback in the form of leveling and the accumulation of resources and achievement awards. Players tend to find video games intrinsically satisfying. And they tend to loose a sense of external things when engaged in playing them.

People are often critical of video games for precisely this reason. They feel that gamers are much to involved in there games. However, I would turn it around and ask why are the other activities in life so much less compelling. Why are work and education more like video games? Is work, somehow, supposed to be unpleasant? Is education inherently difficult. What if work and education could be designed using the same principles as video games? Instead of being disdainful and suspicious, maybe there is something here that we can take advantage of.

Contributor and Detractors

There is a lame old joke which says that the nice thing about hitting yourself on the head with a hammer is that it feels so good when you stop. Certainly the presence of adversity in your life can make you unhappy. But does removing it make you happy? There are numerous things in life that can make you unhappy. These include shortage of money, criticisms from people whose opinion matters to you, feelings of inadequacy, boredom, and fearing for your physical well being, just to name a few. While these things make you unhappy, their removal does not make you happy. It will only make you less unhappy. It seems that there is an equilibrium state between happiness and unhappiness where you are neither happy nor unhappy.

There are things that make us happy and things that make us unhappy. Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness, referred to these as contributors and detractors, respectively. Some of the detractors are mentioned above. According to Russell a contributor to happiness is zeal. That is, you have to have positive energy exerted towards something worth pursuing in order to be happy. Russell's student Wittgenstein added the notion that a sense of purpose was essential to happiness.

We are beginning to see a pattern emerging here. In order to be happy, you have to remove the things that make you unhappy and purse things that are somehow worthy of pursuing. In addition, these things that you pursue have to be things that you are good enough at to make progress. Next time, I will bring this all together in a coherent psychological theory.

Reflecting and Refocusing

Many years ago, when I worked in a government office, there was sign that circulated which many people would pin to the walls of their cubicle. The sign began with an articulation of the ideal expectations for employee behavior and ended with the observation "but when you are up to your ass in alligators, it is easy to forget that your goal was to drain the swamp." This seems to have broader applicability as we get into any number of situations where dealing with the dynamics of the situation distracts us from the very reason that brought us into the situation.

As we explore the philosophical foundations of games and the various analytical and linguistic subtitles, we are vulnerable to the same phenomenon. So, let us pause for a moment to reflect on what we have done and where we would like to go with it.

We have defined the concept of a game. We have constructed a universal. Ideally, this universal includes all things that are games and no things that are not games. The Aristotelian approach of defining games did not work because games do not have attributes like rocks, plant and trees that were developed over years of evolution. We have taken a more Platonic approach in attempting to discover the essence of "gameness", not in the World of Forms but in the world of abstract ideas. Abstract ideas are ideal when they are intellectually economical.

We needn't worry about Hume and Wittgenstein because we are not trying to account for all conversational uses of the word "game". Bacon steered us away from that in his warning about Idols of the Marketplace. Our goal was to find a definition of games that reflected the essence of games not the variety of uses of the word. We did this because we want the particulars within our universal to be the 'same' thing. We want this because the extent to which they are the same the more we can learn about them. So, if we have to toss out some particulars as not really being games, this is the cost of gathering more knowledge about those that are games.

As we proceed with out analysis, we may wish to refine the definition. However, unlike the philosopher who would refine the definition to give it greater coverage, the researcher would refine the definition so that it works better for research purposes. That is, we would refine the definition if that refined definition would help us to learn more about the particulars contained in the universal.

The Grasshopper

In a delightful book entitled The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Bernard Suits explores the concept of a game. This book is a stunning piece of work for three reasons. First, he achieves what Wittgenstein failed to do. He manages to define the concept of a game. Second, it is an excellent example of the process of concept analysis as the grasshopper attempts to define the concept of game and then defend it against challenges. Third, it provides some profound insights about both life and games.

On the first point, Wittgenstein not only failed to come up with an adequate definition of the concept of games, he proved (or thought he had proved) that such a definition was not possible. Yet Suits defines playing a game as a "voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." [pg. 55] This is not the formal definition and one would have to read the book to understand Suits' definition more fully. But, it does capture the essence of playing a game. How did Suits get this right where Wittgenstein got it wrong? I believe that the answer lies in the fact that Wittgenstein was looking for attributes - rules, players, strategies, and so forth. Suits' definition is teleological. It defines games in terms of the purpose they serve. Aristotle's final cause was the purpose for which a thing exists. And, according to Aristotle, you must understand the final cause in order to understand a thing. Sadly, teleology has fallen out of favor. And, yet, it is clear that you cannot define the concept of game without reference to the purpose for which they are played.

On the second point, Suits provides us with an excellent example of concept analysis, a technique that is often woefully missing from social science research and almost unheard of in business research. Using commonplace understandings of concepts in research is as destructive to good research as is replacing statistical analysis with 'gut feel' or replacing methodology with mere curiosity. This was, in fact, the essence of Bacon's Idols of the Marketplace. Bacon saw, way back in the 17th century, that using commonplace understandings of concepts was destructive to the project of science. And yet, today, we do it all the time. Sadly, there are far too few examples of good concept analysis and Suits provides us with an exemplar.

On the third point, games are one of the few activities that we pursue for their own sake. This means that they have intrinsic rather than instrumental value. Aristotle pointed out that happiness is the only goal we pursue for its own sake. Now, Suits is pointing out that playing games is an activity that we pursue for its own sake. Is there a connection between happiness, games and the ideal life? I think so, but it would be way too premature to suggest that. Let's see how things unfold.

Universals Crash and Burn

As we observed in the last post, John Locke attempted to update Aristotle's view of universals by saying that we select key attributes for defining categories based upon our objectives. So, we can look at games, decide what salient features they all have in common and define the concept of game based upon those features. It looks like the project might be gaining altitude again. But, instead it will take a nosedive.

David Hume would observe that we form categories based on a subconscious cognitive process that cannot be made explicit. That is, we go about our business in the world, experience games, and form a visceral concept of what a game is. Any attempt to explicitly define characteristics would be artificial and doomed to failure. The Supreme court justice who admitted that he could not define pornography but claimed - "I know it when I see it", was embodying Hume's view of universals.

If Hume steered the project into a nose dive, Wittgenstein let it crash and burn. According to him, the only thing the elements of some categories have in common is that they are members of the same category. He used a, now famous, analogy to family resemblances. If you go to a family reunion and look at the members of the family you will see common elements. Some will have the family eyes. Some will have the family nose or mouth. Some the family brow. And so on. There are overlapping features held by subsets of the family but no set of features common to all. For example, not everyone has the nose. Or not everyone has eyes. Universals, according to Wittgenstein, are made the same way. You cannot define a core set of attributes because there is no core set of attributes that all instances have in common. And the concept he used to illustrate this was - you guessed it - games!

Should we despair at this point and give up our attempt to define what constitutes a game? Should we despair that if this is true knowledge is not really possible? No, that would be a little overly dramatic. Instead we will back up and see where these great minds went wrong. We will go back to some road signs provided by Bacon and Aristotle and try to get back on the right path. And that will be the topic of the next post.

The Decline of Universals

Aristotle saw universals as constructs based in reality. A tree is a tree because it shares key attributes with other trees. Anybody can look at a tree and a squirrel and see that they are not the same thing. Initially this seems to solve the problem. But in the long run it only makes it worse. It answers the question - where do universals come from? - by saying that they are constructed based upon common attributes. However, it then leads to the question - where do attributes come from? If the squirrel happened to be brown, we could create a universal "brown things" to which the tree and the squirrel would belong. Aristotle might balk at this by citing that "brown" is not an essential attribute and universals should be formed based on common essential attributes. This sounds good and it seems like we are making progress. But, we are not. How do we know that an attribute is essential? Is an attribute essential because it is in the definition of kind? Or is an attribute in the definition of kind because it is essential? That whirring sound in the background is our cognitive wheels spinning in the philosophical mud.

Locke made some progress by saying that the creation of universals involves a cognitive process of abstraction whereby we we select attributes based on some set of objectives. I am going to jump in and help Locke out here by saying that our objective is usually intellectual economy. We create categories because they are efficient ways to organize our knowledge. Otherwise, we get into huge trouble with Locke. We get into trouble because it raises questions such as 1) how do we select objectives?, and 2) how do we know that a particular category is better than another category at meeting those objectives?

Locke has both helped and hindered the pursuit of universals. He has helped in that his claim is intuitively appealing. It does seem to be the case that we look at a collection of particulars and though some cognitive process extract a group based on similarities. In fact, it feels so built in that one has to wonder if it is just a function of the brain. He has hurt in that it has made our understanding even more unclear. How does this process work? Can it be made explicit? How are objectives defined? How are categories evaluated with respect to objectives?

All we were trying to do was to figure out what a game is? How did life get to be so complicated. Any six year old can tell you whether or not something is a game. And, yet, a philosophical adult has to admit defeat. Why is that? Well, David Hume will come to the rescue on this question and, in doing so, take a stab at the larger question. However, as we will see, Hume will jump into the muddied waters and stir up even more mud. Following that, Wittgenstein will show that once you are into muddied waters you can't get out. And that is what we will take up next.

Aristotle and the Notion of Purpose

A central element in Aristotle's metaphysics was the idea that in order to under stand a thing, you needed to understand four causes. This is a little confusing to the modern reader as the word 'cause' has taken on a slightly different meaning. However, if you think about it as 'important things to know' rather than causes, it makes a little more sense.

Aristotle believed that in order to understand a thing, you needed to understand its material cause (what is was made of), its efficient cause (how is got made), its formal cause (what it became), and its final cause (why it was made or what is was made for). Consider a table, for example. The material cause might be wood. It would be very different if it were made of ice, or putty, or sand. The efficient cause might be a craftsman, although it might also be a manufacturing process or a wood carving process. Each would produce a different result. The formal cause would, of course, be a table. However, the wood could have been used to make a boat, or a chair or any number of other things. Finally, no pun intended, we have the final cause, the purpose of table. A table is made to put things on. It could have been made for shade or protection. But the fact that it was made to place things on is an important aspect of a table.

This notion of final causes is central to Aristotle's view of of the world which we call teleological. This comes from two ancient Greek words 'telos' (far off or end state) and 'logos' (rigorous understanding). When we say that we have a teleological understanding of a thing we are saying that we understand it in terms of its purpose.

Teleology was tossed out of physics by Galileo who said that you can understand astronomy without having to resort to any underlying purpose in the universe. This is probably true. But, teleology stayed out of other sciences as well, probably due to physics envy. And there are numerous places where it would be appropriate. For example, when you say that a turtle has a hard shell for protection, it is a teleological claim. Natural sciences other than physics and chemistry are filled with teleological claims.

Taking this a step further, from natural science to social science, you have to ask whether or not it is possible to understand social science at all without referring to purposes. Certainly you cannot understand games without reference to their purpose. This is why Wittgenstein failed and Suit succeeded. But, again, we are getting ahead of ourselves. Next time we will follow the evolution of Aristotle's concept of universals and see why it ends in a train wreck.

Plato and the Form of Game

Looking out my window again and seeing a tree, I might ask "is this thing a tree because it is a member of the set of trees, or is it a member of the set of trees because it is a tree?" In fact, Plato wondered this as well. Is category membership derived from essence? Or, is essence derived from category membership? Are the particulars in a category because they are all the 'same' thing? Or do we consider them the 'same' thing because they are all members of the same category?

Plato believed that categories were determined by essence. We recognize a tree as a tree because there is a universal concept of 'treeness'. And even though each individual tree is an imperfect copy of that template, we can still recognize the tree as an instance of that ideal. This sounds pretty good until we ask where did that universal concept of treeness come from? And, trying to answer that, Plato gets into a lot of trouble.

Plato believed in a World of Forms (or templates or ideals) where all of these categories exist independent of the material world. But, he got into trouble trying to explain where this World of Forms came from and how we access it to recognize things like trees. You can have a lot of fun at Plato's expense over this. Plato believed that this World of Forms was somehow more real than the material world which was just an imperfect copy of the Forms. He beleived that the World of Forms was eternal. He believed that you had knowledge of this world prior to being born, but the trauma of birth made you forget it all. So, you spent your life remembering bits of it. This led him to say that you never really learn anything, you only remember things. You can go on and on and have a good chuckle at Plato's expense over this. However, once you have given it some serious thought, you probably have to admit that Plato was right. He didn't get the mechanics down, but the notion of ideal concepts does seem to hold up.

If you forget about immaterial worlds where forms reside and focus instead on intellectual economy and the pursuit of knowledge then it does seem to be the case that there are ideal definitions for concepts. If a thing has an essense and the category is defined based upon that essence then we have achieved the greatest intellectual economy possibl in the organization of our knowledge. These forms do not exist in some immaterial world. They exist in our minds when they are well organized. And organizing our minds well gives us the greatest purchase on the pursuit of knowledge.

A quick example can illustrate this. Consider the Periodic Chart of Elements. Organizing elements based on the number of electrons provides great intellectual economy. Just how far would chemistry be today if the Periodic Chart contained elements like creek water and tree sap. How far would medicine get if the body were made of blood, phlegm and bile? How far would psychology get if personalities were made up of introversion/extroversion,... well I am digressing.

So, back to the topic at hand, there must be an ideal form of game. If we can find that ideal form, it will advance our understanding of games and how games relate to other universals such as happiness, productivity, personal growth, education, and the like. But, before we do that, we will have a major conceptual train wreck thanks to Wittgenstein. And that won't happen for several weeks yet. So stay tuned.

What Is a Game?

I always like to begin an inquiry into a new area by looking at the philosophical underpinnings. This usually identifies the major issues and provides a framework for interpreting higher level claims and disputes. There are two ways to approach this. One is by trying to find out what some of my favorite philosophers have said on the topic. The other is to attempt to understand the key concepts in the new field of inquiry. One might say - "Hey! This is video games we are talking about here. What philosophical grounding might there possibly be?" But, speaking with the confidence of some one who has done this many times, I can say with surety that there are philosophical underpinning to everything. You just need to know where to look.

In this post, I am going to sketch out the philosophical foundations and where I think they will lead. Over the next few posts, I will explore the philosophical issues in more detail. If philosophy gives you a headache or puts you to sleep, you may want to come back in a month. By then, I should have the foundations all laid out and be ready to more on to less arcane issues.

When we ask the question - What is a Game? - we are inquiring as to the meaning of a concept. A concept is an abstraction of particular things in our experience that we group together for the sake of intellectual economy. How we get from these particular things to the concepts in which we group them is the central problem of metaphysics; a problem known as the problem of universals. Many revered philosophers include Plato and Aristotle have commented on this problem. More recently, Ludwig Wittgenstein chipped in with a damaging critique of the problem of universals by saying that the particulars things grouped together in a concept might not actually have any specific set of things in common. This is a damning critique, because, if Wittgenstein is correct, then knowledge is not possible. And the example he used was -- Games! So, as I began this inquiry, I thought I would start with Wittgenstein and the apparent impossibility of defining games.

However, in pursuing this, I came across another related work by Bernard Suits called The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia in which Suits defies Wittgenstein by defining the concept of a game. According to Suits "playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" Well!! It doesn't get any better than this. On one hand we have one of the greatest philosophical minds of the 20th century claiming that you cannot define a game. On the other hand you have some guy I never heard of providing what appears to be a perfectly serviceable definition. As we attempt to unravel this apparent contradiction we will learn a little metaphysics and a lot about games.