Only a Game

Intermission

Hope you enjoyed "Quotes Month"; I'm going to take my annual break for the Wheel of Fortune a little earlier than usual this year but I shall be back after November for the run up to the Winter Festival. When I return I hope to have reached a new understanding with myself about the blogging, but as of yet I still don't know what that will be. However, I shall return forthwith and in the interim, enjoy the silence.

Ghandi on Unity

Mohandas Ghandi, writing in a political pamphlet, speaking through the voice of the Editor in one of his dialogues:

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?

Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule), 1908

Pannikar on Spirituality

Catholic Priest and proponent of inter-religious dialogue, Raimon Pannikar, summarizes the central ideas of all major spiritual traditions:

The essentials of the religious teachings could be summed up in three ideas: the relinking of onself with the rest of human beings, with our neighbours, with the community, with our true self; the relinking of humankind with Nature, with all things, with the environment, including machines; the relinking of humanity with the Divine, with Mystery, the Sacred, the Numinous, the Absolute, Transcendence.

“Religions and the Culture of Peace”, in Religion, Politics & Peace, 1999

Hume on Religion

Scottish philosopher David Hume considers the role of religion via Cleanthes his “experimental theist” voice:

The proper office of religion is to regulate the hearts of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and, as its operation is silent and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked and confounded with these other motives. When it distinguishes itself, and acts as a separate principle over men, it has departed from its proper sphere and has become only a cover to faction and ambition.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1750-1776

BrainHex Shop Now Open (BrainHex)

Cross-posted from BrainHex.com.

Thanks to Zazzle (and a little help from Corvus), we have set up some BrainHex merchandise in the new BrainHex shop. At the moment, you can buy light and dark T-shirts, a button/pin badge, stickers, a fridge magnet, a mug, a cap or a mouse mat with any of the BrainHex class icons on them. Each of the T-shirts also has the phrase associated with the class written on the back.

Many thanks to everyone who let us know they were interested in merchandise!

To comment to this post, please do so at the equivalent post on the BrainHex site.

Parekh on Education

British peer and political theorist, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, presents a case for teaching religion in schools:

There is... a good case for teaching religion in schools on both educational and political grounds. One of the principal aims of education is to familiarize children with and to get them to appreciate the great achievements of the human spirit, and religion is one of these… There are also good political reasons for teaching religion. If schools do not teach it, children will come to depend wholly on their families and religious organizations, which only expose them to their own religion and that too from a narrow sectarian standpoint.

“The Voice of Religion in Political Discourse”, in Religion, Politics & Peace, 1999

Dewey on Freedom

Educational reformer John Dewey considering the role of schools:

I shall begin to believe that we care more for freedom than we do for imposing our own beliefs upon others in order to subject them to our will, when I see that the main purpose of our schools and other institutions is to develop powers of unremitting and discriminating observation and judgement.

“Philosophies of Freedom" in Freedom in the Modern World, 1928.

Arendt on Objectivity

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt, interpreting Heisenberg's comments on science:

...the experiment “being a question put before nature” (Galileo), the answers of science will always remain replies to questions asked by men; the confusion in the issue of “objectivity” was to assume that there could be answers without questions and results independent of a question-asking being. Physics, we know today, is no less a man-centred inquiry into what is than historical research.

“The Concept of History”, Between Past & Future, 1961

Heisenberg on Science

Werner Heisenberg, famous for his Uncertainty Principle, proposing that science be understood not as a single conceptual framework, but rather a collection of ways of examining the world:

The most important new result of nuclear physics was the recognition of the possibility of applying quite different types of natural laws, without contradiction, to one and the same physical event. This is due to the fact that within a system of laws which are based on certain fundamental ideas only certain quite definite ways of asking questions make sense, and thus, that such a system is separated from others which allow different questions to be put.

Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science, 1952.

Testosterone and Videogames (ihobo)

You can read my thoughts about testosterone and videogames over on the ihobo site today.  It builds upon some numbers I recently crunched from the BrainHex data concerning the relationship between class and gender, also up today on the BrainHex site.

By the way, I've been accused (not unjustly) of being obsessed about ranting against the industry's obsession with 3D shooters. This latest piece is an attempt to draw a line under that. No promises in this regard, but I will endeavour to try and find new topics of conversation concerning games after my annual break for the Wheel next month.

And lastly, speaking of BrainHex, this weekend we had more than 10,000 new responses - more than doubling the total so far almost overnight!

Wittgenstein on Systems

Ludwig Wittgenstein considering the role of systems in experimental tests:

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.

On Certainty, remark #105, from notes written1949-1951

Montaigne on Truth

The Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne, pondering the opposite of truth:

If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take for certain the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite, without bound or limit.

Of Liars, 1580

Quotes Month

For October, I have chosen a series of nine quotes. They form something of a sequence, but can be read individually. I'll be posting two each week during October, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday, in place of my regular blogging. Discussions of each quote are, of course, most welcome!

7500+ Responses (BrainHex)

Over on the BrainHex site, a short post showing the distribution of Classes in the survey so far. Many thanks to the 7,737 people who have taken the test so far!

Strange Tides

My life has been swept up in currents beyond my control recently, and I am letting the spate take me where it will. There are many things in doubt going forward, and one of them is my blogging. Back when I had my mornings to myself, I used to enjoy blogging to wake up, but now I have to find time elsewhere in the day to blog, and it has begun to feel more like a chore than a joy. I either need to scale it back, or cut it out.

It doesn't help that my head is completely stuck in thinking about videogames in market terms (as a dutiful professional), whereas almost everyone who wants to read about videogames is a dedicated gamer, unwilling or incapable of thinking in market terms. Discussion of game mechanics seems pointless to me now except in the context of neurobiology of play, and when I write on this it seems that only the academics listen. If that's the case, why don't I just switch to writing papers instead of blogging?

As for my philosophy writing, how much longer can I continue to throw my writing into the void of the internet? It was enormously entertaining when I first started, but now I feel that I'm boring people with the same tropes and failing to reach the audience who would most enjoy my writing because the majority of my readership has come to me via games. As I get ever-closer to becoming a professional philosopher (next year looks to be the year I finally get paid for it), Only a Game is starting to sit a little uncomfortably with me, as if I don't know what I should be doing with it any more.

November is fast approaching, and as usual I will take this off for the Wheel to let myself listen to the silent hum of the universe and attempt to divine direction and meaning. In the meantime, you could help me out by letting me know your thoughts about the Game, in order to help me to judge how best to go forward with it.

Any Other Business

That's all I have for now on the subject of bioethics. I hope you enjoyed this brief excursion into the ethics of life and "cyborg ethics" and welcome any final points of discussion you might have in the comments.

I'm going to take a brief break to recover my wits but I'll wrangle the comments when I get a chance, and I should be back before the month is over. Have fun!

More nonsense soon.

2D Or Not 2D (ihobo)

My entry into this month's Round Table is up on ihobo today; it's a rant about the games industry's ongoing denial about the commercial value of 2D games entitled 2D or Not 2D.