We propose strategic games wherein the strategies consist of players asking each other questions and answering those questions. We study simplifications of such games wherein two players simultaneously ask each other a question that the opponent is then obliged to answer. The motivation for our research is to model conversation including the dynamics of questions and answers, to provide new links between game theory and dynamic logics of information, and to exploit the dynamic/strategic structure that, we think, (...) lies implicitly inside epistemic models for epistemic languages, and to make that structure an explicit subject of logical study. Our main contributions are: the notion of a two-person question-answer game with information goals, the existence and computation of equilibria for these games, the correspondence with Bayesian games and their equilibria, and a connection between logic and game theory namely the existence of equilibria for positive goal formulae. (shrink)

A general characterization of logical opposition is given in the present paper, where oppositions are defined by specific answers in an algebraic question-answer game. It is shown that opposition is essentially a semantic relation of truth values between syntactic opposites, before generalizing the theory of opposition from the initial Apuleian square to a variety of alter- native geometrical representations. In the light of this generalization, the famous problem of existential import is traced back to an ambiguous interpretation (...) of assertoric sentences in Aristotle's traditional logic. Following Abelard’s distinction between two alternative readings of the O-vertex: Non omnis and Quidam non, a logical difference is made between negation and denial by means of a more fine- grained modal analysis. A consistent treatment of assertoric oppositions is thus made possible by an underlying abstract theory of logical opposition, where the central concept is negation. A parallel is finally drawn between opposition and consequence, laying the ground for future works on an abstract operator of opposition that would characterize logical negation just as does Tarski’s operator of consequence for logical truth. (shrink)

We examine a special case of inquiry games and give an account of the informational import of asking questions. We focus on yes-or-no questions, which always carry information about the questioner's strategy, but never about the state of Nature, and show how strategic information reduces uncertainty through inferences about other players' goals and strategies. This uncertainty cannot always be captured by information structures of classical game theory. We conclude by discussing the connection with Gricean pragmatics and contextual constraints on (...) interpretation. (shrink)

A logic of questions and answers exists within the logic of statements, if we make the following identifications (roughly): "Whether" questions are identified with true exclusive disjunctions, and "which" questions are identified with true existential quantifications. The question-and-answer process is interpreted as an information-matching game. The question mark is not needed except as a device of abbreviation. Complete and partial answers can be distinguished and various relations of relevance, independence, and resolution defined.

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology (...) of the work and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Our power of guessing corresponds to a bird's musical and aeronautical powers.There still remains one more economic consideration in reference to a hypothesis; namely, that it may give a good "leave," as the billiard players say.There is a game called "Twenty Questions," in which one party thinks of something well known to the other, who may then ask at most twenty questions answerable by yes or no, after which he has a right to make three guesses. … The principle (...) of pragmatism is applicable here.One of the more intriguing lines of thought in the writings of Peirce stems from a number of brief statements that seem to be game-theoretic in nature. Often they appear to be constructed to support or illustrate a broader... (shrink)

Folk ontology seems baroque, compared to the austere ontology of many philosophers. Plausibly, the issue comes down to a choice between existence concepts: the folk and the austere philosophers employ different quantifier meanings. This paper aims to clarify and defend this hypothesis and explore its upshots. How do we choose between the alternative existence concepts; is the austere philosophers’ concept better than the folk’s undiscriminating one? I will argue that contrary to what Ted Sider suggests, the austere existence concept and (...) the corresponding austere answers to existence questions do not prevail in the context of “inquiry”, i.e. the context of practically disinterested pursuit of epistemic excellence. Sider’s suggestion relies on a one-sided idea of epistemic excellence, as beliefs’ conforming to the world. Once we recognize another epistemic aim, namely the agent understanding connections between known facts, ordinary objects will be back in the game. (shrink)

In recent years a growing number of democratic theorists have proposed ways to increase citizen engagement, while channeling those democratic energies in positive directions and away from systematic marginalization, exclusion and intolerance. One novel answer is provided by a strain of democratic theory known as agonistic pluralism, which valorizes adversarial engagement and recognizes the marginalizing tendencies implicit in drives to consensus and stability. However, the divergences between competing variants of agonistic pluralism remain largely underdeveloped or unrecognized. In this article, (...) I address this shortcoming, examining these strains of agonism around the constraints placed upon democratic discourse. I argue that the ‘associative agonism’ of theorists such as Bonnie Honig and William Connolly offers the best means for cultivating virtues necessary to revitalize a contentious democratic politics which also fosters receptivity to pluralism and difference. (shrink)

Walton's book is a study of several fallacies in informal logic. Focusing on question-answer dialogues, and committed to a pragmatic rather than a semantic approach, he attempts to generate criteria for evaluating good and bad questions and answers. The book contains a discussion of such well-recognized fallacies as many questions, black-or-white questions, loaded questions, circular arguments, question-begging assertions and epithets, ad hominem and tu quoque arguments, ignoratio elenchi, and replying to a question with a question. (...) In addition, Walton develops several artificial dialogue games and has an excellent discussion of burden of proof in nonlegal contexts. The discussion is for the most part nontechnical and does not presuppose any training in formal logic. It is illustrated with many (sometimes overlong) examples of fallacies drawn from real life--mostly debates in the Canadian House of Commons. . . . Walton's book breaks new ground on a number of issues. Choice This first full-length study of logical fallacies, errors, faults, illicit attacks, blunders, and other critical deficiencies in interrogation and reply has been written in the tradition of informal fallacies in logic. It is especially valuable, readable, and interesting because of the 139 case studies it presents, many of these case studies come from political debates and some from interviews, legal cross-examinations, and other sources. Walton uses these challenging examples of tricky, aggressive, argumentative, or fallacious questions to develop coherent and pragmatic guidelines for criticizing questionable questions (and in some cases their replies) on logical grounds. Among the types of problematic questions analyzed are: the traditional so-called fallacy of many questions, illustrated by the famous Have you stopped beating your wife?; black and white questions; terminologically loaded questions; and questions containing personal attacks. These and other types of problematic questions as well as evasive replies and replying to a question with a question are studied. Critical errors of reasoning are identified and analyzed by developing context-based, normative models of reasonable dialogue in which a questioner must have freedom to ask informative and probing questions, and the respondent must be constrained to give reasonably direct, not overly evasive answers. In this era of negative and evasive political campaigning, with candidates employing skillful tactics of manipulating public opinion to assure election rather than taking clear stands and seriously debating issues in an informed and sincere manner, Question-Reply Argumentation is especially relevant reading for those who take democracy seriously. The methods used reflect a significant shift from earlier semantically based theories to current pragmatic, dialogue-based models, and will be of interest to logicians and linguists. The volume's conclusions should challenge some current preconceptions. Recommended reading for courses in logic, speech communications, linguistics, philosophy of language, areas of political science relating to political discourse and debate, courses on questioning in cognitive psychology, and courses on critical thinking in education. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that games like chess, languages like English, and speech acts like assertion are constituted by rules. Lots of others disagree. To argue over this productively, it would be first useful to know what it would be for these things to be rule-constituted. Searle famously claimed in Speech Acts that rules constitute things in the sense that they make possible the performance of actions related to those things (Searle 1969). On this view, rules constitute games, languages, and speech (...) acts in the sense that they make possible playing them, speaking them and performing them. This raises the question what it is to perform rule-constituted actions (e. g. play, speak, assert) and the question what makes constitutive rules distinctive such that only they make possible the performance of new actions (e. g. playing). In this paper I will criticize Searle’s answers to these questions. However, my main aim is to develop a better view, explain how it works in the case of each of games, language, and assertion and illustrate its appeal by showing how it enables rule-based views of these things to respond to various objections. (shrink)

Causal reasoning and game-theoretic reasoning are fundamental topics in artificial intelligence, among many other disciplines: this paper is concerned with their intersection. Despite their importance, a formal framework that supports both these forms of reasoning has, until now, been lacking. We offer a solution in the form of (structural) causal games, which can be seen as extending Pearl's causal hierarchy to the game-theoretic domain, or as extending Koller and Milch's multi-agent influence diagrams to the causal domain. We then (...) consider three key questions: i) How can the (causal) dependencies in games - either between variables, or between strategies - be modelled in a uniform, principled manner? ii) How may causal queries be computed in causal games, and what assumptions does this require? iii) How do causal games compare to existing formalisms? To address question i), we introduce mechanised games, which encode dependencies between agents' decision rules and the distributions governing the game. In response to question ii), we present definitions of predictions, interventions, and counterfactuals, and discuss the assumptions required for each. Regarding question iii), we describe correspondences between causal games and other formalisms, and explain how causal games can be used to answer queries that other causal or game-theoretic models do not support. Finally, we highlight possible applications of causal games, aided by an extensive open-source Python library. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Japanese Things and Words:An Answer to Heidegger's QuestionMichael F. MarraIt has been over thirty years since my high school teacher of philosophy, Professor Dino Dezzani, recommended a book from which to begin my study of philosophy: Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) Unterwegs zur Sprache (On the way to language [1959]). Evidently he was aware of my interest in literature and thought that Heidegger's discussion of words, things, and poetic (...) language would give some sort of direction to my naïve and youthful questions of what literature is about and what I should hope to find in it.The impact that Heidegger's book had on this young student was much greater than my professor could ever have imagined. I would hardly have committed myself to the study of Japan were it not for my reading of "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," which appears in On the Way to Language. The dialogue is a fictional reconstruction of an actual meeting that Heidegger had with Tezuka Tomio (1903-1983), a Japanese scholar of German literature who visited the German philosopher in Freiburg at the end of March 1954.1 In the dialogue the Inquirer (Heidegger) formulates a central question that, in my opinion, should be of fundamental interest to anyone seriously concerned with the study of Japan. The question is deceptively simple, at least compared with the difficulty of coming up with the answer-an answer that, as a matter of fact, the reader will not find fully formulated in the dialogue. The question is: "What is the Japanese word for 'language' "? The Japanese visitor (Tezuka in Heidegger's recollection) appears to have been caught off guard, as we can see from Heidegger's parenthetical remark: "after further hesitation." Had Heidegger posed the same question to a Frenchman or an Italian, the answer would have been immediate: "langue" or "lingua." The challenge for Tezuka was definitely higher since he had a variety of words from which to choose. He could have used, for example, the expression gengo, a combination of two Chinese characters indicating "the speech of words." Instead, he used an ancient Japanese word derived from the native Yamato vocabulary: kotoba, which literally means "the foliage of speech."2There should be little doubt that Tezuka's choice was prompted by his desire to please Heidegger by playing the philosopher's own game-something that Tezuka totally succeeded in doing, as Heidegger's dialogue attests. Tezuka introduced a term that lent itself to etymological play-an enterprise very close to the heart of Heidegger, and one that was also very popular among Japanese thinkers.3 In fact, the expression kotoba incorporates the word koto, which means both "thing" and [End Page 555] "word" and which is found in the basic concepts of Japanese ontology: Mikoto (God, or "the honorable thing"), makoto (truth, or "the true word"), kotodama (soul, or "the spirit of words"), and kotowari(reason, or "the splitting of things"). The association of "words" and "things" in the Japanese word for "language" must have been of particular interest to Heidegger, who, four years before his meeting with Tezuka, had written "Das Ding" (The thing), a major lecture on the notion of things interpreted in light of the fourfold earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. In the dialogue Heidegger refers to this essay, in which "things" are presented in their objectified presence-the disparaged things that modernity and technology have dispossessed of their Being (Sein). Heidegger points out that never has the distance between things and Sein been as great as in modernity, when all distances in space and time have shrunk.4 Given the unflattering position that Heidegger had taken on the notion of "things," Tezuka was forced to come to the rescue of the Japanese word kotoba by endowing koto with the meaning of two Heideggerian keywords: "event" (kotogara) and "affair" (Sache). The thingly component of kotoba was not simply an objectifiable presence that can be counted, analyzed, and disposed of, but rather a poietic "act" that has the power to create a reality by transforming the named thing (koto) into a real thing (koto).In "A Dialogue... (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate around the abilities of large language models such as GPT-3, dealing with: firstly, evaluating how well GPT does in the Turing Test, secondly the limits of such models, especially their tendency to generate falsehoods, and thirdly the social consequences of the problems these models have with truth-telling. We start by formalising the recently proposed notion of reversible questions, which Floridi & Chiriatti propose allow one to ‘identify the nature of the source of their answers’, (...) as a probabilistic measure based on Item Response Theory from psychometrics. Following a critical assessment of the methodology which led previous scholars to dismiss GPT’s abilities, we argue against claims that GPT-3 completely lacks semantic ability. Using ideas of compression, priming, distributional semantics and semantic webs we offer our own theory of the limits of large language models like GPT-3, and argue that GPT can competently engage in various semantic tasks. The real reason GPT’s answers seem senseless being that truth-telling is not amongst them. We claim that these kinds of models cannot be forced into producing only true continuation, but rather to maximise their objective function they strategize to be plausible instead of truthful. This, we moreover claim, can hijack our intuitive capacity to evaluate the accuracy of its outputs. Finally, we show how this analysis predicts that a widespread adoption of language generators as tools for writing could result in permanent pollution of our informational ecosystem with massive amounts of very plausible but often untrue texts. (shrink)

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a (...) central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping (...) causal patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that play and games contribute to the good life. One might naturally wonder how games in particular so contribute? Granted, games can be very good, what exactly is so good about them when they are good? Although a natural starting point, this question is perhaps naive. Games come in all shapes and sizes, and different games are often good in very different ways. Chess, Bridge, Bingo, Chutes and Ladders, Football, Spin the Bottle, Dungeons & Dragons, (...) Pac-Man, Minecraft and Charades are all games, and can all contribute to a good life, but each will characteristically enrich someone’s life in its own distinctive way. Some games facilitate socializing and sociability, other games improve physical fitness, some develop a sense of fair play and reciprocity, while others enhance concentration and analytic skills. Asking ‘what is good about games?’ and assuming a simple answer is as naïve as asking ‘what is good about fiction?’ or ‘what is good about sex?’ However, a less naïve question and philosophically interesting question is not hard to formulate. Plausibly, much of the heterogeneity of the value of games stems from the different kinds of instrumental value of different games. Perhaps we should therefore ask in what ways the activity of playing games is characteristically good for its own sake. Unfortunately, the philosophical literature on the non-instrumental value of playing games is sparse. One of the few sustained treatments of the topic can be found in an underappreciated exchange between Thomas Hurka and John Tasioulas. Interestingly, despite taking different views of what it is to play a game, they both make room for the non-instrumental value of play and achievement in game play and they both argue that these two goods stand in important an important explanatory relation. However, they take diametrically opposed views as to which of these good is more basic. Roughly, on Hurka’s view, the good of achievement is more basic, and it is because of the non-instrumental value of achievement that what Hurka calls “playing in a game,” which involves playing, is itself non-instrumentally good because of the non-instrumental value of achievement. The idea is that if something is non-instrumentally good then loving that thing is also non-instrumentally good, and that playing in a game involves loving the activity for its own sake. In this way, the value of achievement in a game grounds the value of playing in a game. Tasioulas takes exactly the opposite approach. He argues that there must be something independently good about playing a game which grounds the value of achievement in that game. On his view, the typical grounding good or “framing value” of games is play itself – what I am here calling “playing.” In this essay, I raise some objections to both Hurka’s view and Tasioulas’s view and develop a positive alternative conception of the non-instrumental value of games. I argue that while each view is insightful in its own way, neither gets things exactly right. For a start, the way in which they characterize the key concepts is problematic. Hurka’s definition of ‘play a game’, which he lifts from Suits, is problematic, while both of their characterizations of play are problematic for reasons I rehearse here. They also take an unduly narrow view of the possible role of achievement in game play, both effectively conflating achievement with “excellence.” I argue, by contrast, that there is an important sense in which even someone who is not very good at the game by any objective standard can still reap the goods of achievements in games. At the same time, those who play games typically do not do so for the sake of achievements as such, though they may do something which is in a sense tantamount to this, or so I shall argue. Finally, I argue that neither Hurka’s “achievement first” order of explanation nor Tasioulas’s “play first” order of explanation is fully correct. I argue for what I call a “variable priority” view. On this view, the value of play sometimes grounds the value of achievement in a game, while in other cases the independently grounded value of achievement in a game provides a further ground for the value of play, though even in that case play is independently good for its own sake. I begin by laying out Hurka’s and Tasioulas’s views. (shrink)

We examine a special case of inquiry games and give an account of the informational import of asking questions. We focus on yes-or-no questions, which always carry information about the questioner's strategy, but never about the state of Nature, and show how strategic information reduces uncertainty through inferences about other players' goals and strategies. This uncertainty cannot always be captured by information structures of classical game theory. We conclude by discussing the connection with Gricean pragmatics and contextual constraints on (...) interpretation.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HOW CAN QUESTIONS BE INFORMATIVE BEFORE THEY ARE ANSWERED? STRATEGIC INFORMATION IN INTERROGATIVE GAMESVolume 9, Issue 2Emmanuel J. Genot and Justine JacotDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.8Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

A predicate of personal taste occurring in a sentence in which the perspectival information is not linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase may have two different readings. In case the speaker of a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste uses the subjective predicate encoding perspectival information in one way and the hearer interprets it in another way, the agents’ acts are not coordinated. In this paper I offer an answer to the question of how a (...) hearer can strategically interact with a speaker on the intended perspectival information so that both agents can optimally solve their coordination problem. In this sense, I offer a game-theoretical account of the strategic communication with expressions referring to agents’ perspectives, communication which involves the interaction between a speaker who intends to convey some perspectival information and who chooses to utter a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste, instead of a sentence in which the perspectival information is linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase, and a hearer who has to choose between interpreting the uttered sentence in conformity with the speaker’s autocentric use of the predicate of personal taste or in conformity with the speaker’s exocentric use. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of blood-sport as a concept. Through utilising a generalised notion of sport as well as the concept of fair-play, the objective will be to examine whether blood-sports are games and analyse to what extent, if any, blood-sports can be properly called ‘sports’. For the purposes of application and because of the sheer numbers of birds used in the sports-shooting industry, the paper will focus on a discussion of game-birding, but the findings (...) will apply to the practice of ‘blood-sport’ more generally. Work by Sam P. Morris (IJAP, 2014) argues that ‘fair-chase hunting’ can be classified as a game, as well as a sport, although Morris stresses that answers to questions concerning the sport status of hunting do not provide answers to questions regarding the ethics of blood-sports. The author of this paper agrees with Morris regarding the latter point, but pace Morris, she argues that it is doubtful that blood-sport is a game let alone a sport, and that even if one assumes for argument's sake that it is indeed a game, it cannot be properly classed as sport, and that a fair-chase code undermines itself in the context of so called ‘blood-sports’.Footnote1. (shrink)

How does the cognitive system, as a whole, act to generate behaviour? A crucial requirement for science aimed at answering this question is that any empirical paradigm is developed hand in hand with robust theoretical models that explain the emergence of behavioural strategies. Complex games have the potential to be one such paradigm.

When social scientists began employing evolutionary game theory (EGT) in their disciplines, the question arose what the appropriate interpretation of the formal EGT framework would be. Social scientists have given different answer, of which I distinguish three basic kinds. I then proceed to uncover the conceptual tension between the formal framework of EGT, its application in the social sciences, and these three interpretations. First, I argue that EGT under the biological interpretation has a limited application in the (...) social sciences, chiefly because strategy replication often cannot be sensibly interpreted as strategy bearer reproduction in this domain. Second, I show that alternative replication mechanisms imply interpersonal comparability of strategy payoffs. Giving a meaningful interpretation to such comparisons is not an easy task for many social situations, and thus limits the applicability of EGT in this domain. Third, I argue that giving a new interpretation both to strategy replication and selection solves the issue of interpersonal comparability, but at the costs of making the new interpretation incompatible with natural selection interpretations of EGT. To the extent that social scientists seek such a natural selection interpretation, they face a dilemma: either face the challenge that interpersonal comparisons pose, or give up on the natural selection interpretation. By identifying these tensions, my analysis pleas for greater awareness of the specific purposes of EGT modelling in the social sciences, and for greater sensitivity to the underlying microstructure on which the evolutionary dynamics and other EGT solution concepts supervene. (shrink)

Playing for Real is a problem-based textbook on game theory that has been widely used at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This Coursepack Edition will be particularly useful for teachers new to the subject. It contains only the material necessary for a course of ten, two-hour lectures plus problem classes and comes with a disk of teaching aids including pdf files of the author's own lecture presentations together with two series of weekly exercise sets with answers and two (...) sample final exams with answers. There are at least three questions a game theory book might answer: What is game theory about? How is game theory applied? Why is game theory right? Playing for Real is perhaps the only book that attempts to answer all three questions without getting heavily mathematical. Its many problems and examples are an integral part of its approach. Just as athletes take pleasure in training their bodies, there is much satisfaction to be found in training one's mind to think in a way that is simultaneously rational and creative. With all of its puzzles and paradoxes, game theory provides a magnificent mental gymnasium for this purpose. It is the author's hope that exercising on the equipment provided by this Coursepack Edition will bring the reader the same kind of pleasure that it has brought to so many other students. (shrink)

One of the success stories of formal semantics is explicating responsive moves like answers to questions. There is, however, a significant lacune concerning the characterization of _initiating utterances_, which are strongly tied to the conversational activity [language game (Wittgenstein), speech genre (Bakhtin)], or—our terminology—_conversational type_, one is engaged in. To date there has been no systematic proposal trying to account for the range of possible _language games_/_speech genres_/_conversational types_ and their global structure. In particular, concerning the range of subject (...) matter that can and needs to be discussed and by whom—ultimately a semantic analogue of Laplace’s demon. We suggest that the subject matter problem for conversational types is a central task for any semantic theory for conversation. This paper develops a theory of conversational types, which embedded in the theory of conversational interaction KoS, enables this problem to be tackled for a wide range of conversational types drawn from the British National Corpus classification of conversational domains. The theory we develop treats conversational types as first class, not metatheoretical entities, in contrast to explications of corresponding notions in game theoretic approaches. We demonstrate that this allows us to explicate the possibilities interlocutors have to refer to and seek clarification about the types of conversations they are engaged in. (shrink)

Is game theory good for us? This may seem an odd question. In the strict sense, game theory—the axiomatic account of interaction between rational agents—is as morally neutral as arithmetic. But the popularization of game theory as a way of thinking about social interaction is far from neutral. Consider the contrast between characterizing bargaining over distribution as a “zero-sum society” and focussing on “win-win” cooperative solutions. These reflections bring us to the book under review, Prisoner's Dilemma, (...) a popular introduction to game theory and its relation to ethics by the respected science writer William Poundstone. The book begins with a moral dilemma and ends by discussing the evolution of co-operation. Poundstone emphasizes—correctly, to my mind—the ethical potential of game theory. He concludes his first chapter with this striking claim: “Today's practitioners of game theory are attempting to forge a kind of ethical progress. Is there any way to promote the common good in a prisoner's dilemma? The attempt to answer this question is one of the great intellectual adventures of our time”. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealisedexplanation gamein which players collaborate to find the best explanation(s) for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal patterns of (...) variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a (conditionally) optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

What is it that evolves in cultural evolution? This is a question easily posed but not so easily answered. According to common interpretations of cultural evolutionary theory, it is not strictly agents that change over time or proliferate during cultural transmission, but their socially transmitted behavior, what they communicate or acquire via social learning – in short: their interactions. This means that we have to put these cultural interactions into an evolutionary setting and show how they evolve within cultural (...) populations, i.e. within social networks. But the social networks themselves also evolve, which brings us to a multi-level approach of cultural evolution, implementing both, individual and group selection. In this paper I will assume that the microlevel is given by a description of cultural agents, their behavior and decisions, whereas the macrolevel describes the dynamics on population structure and in particular population boundaries in social networks (since we are not really able to identify something analogous to ‘species’ in cultural evolution). In this paper, I am going to offer a specific mathematical model, that makes use of game theory for representing the cultural microlevel and graph theory for the cultural macrolevel. It has to be shown, how both can formally be linked in a synthetic attempt. (shrink)

The essence of the meaning of a declarative sentence is given by stating its truth conditions, and consequently semantics, the study of meaning, must include a theory of truth conditions. Such a theory must not only describe accurately the truth conditions of declarative sentences, it must also answer the question of when two sentences have the same truth conditions. The fundamental semantic relation of having the same truth conditions cannot be ignored by any reasonable theory.This paper is an (...) attempt to find a partial account of this relation by using game theoretical semantics as developed by Hintikka and his followers. The account given will establish a connection between this approach to semantics and the theory of firstdegree entailment formulated by Anderson and Belnap. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping (...) causal patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

It seems an undisputed, fundamental principle that solid philosophical and scientific theories require sufficient reason to support them. Philosophically sufficient reasoning is impossible, however, if it is not backed with strong, undisputed, first principles. This seemingly obvious claim is, nevertheless, not without problems: First, what are the undisputed first principles? What are the basic---logical/epistemological/ontological---differences between undisputed first principles and other ones? What can ensure the special status of these first principles? ;Adequate and well-reasoned answers to these questions seem to be (...) essential to establish firm grounds for any philosophical/scientific investigation. But such adequate reasoning seems impossible, since reasoning itself is the object of our investigation. Alternatively, traditional logic cannot offer us any sufficient solution as logic itself relies on undisputed, first principles. ;The failure of traditional logic to justify its own first principles does not necessarily mean that logic itself requires a leap of faith. Instead of accepting our first principles without any dispute, we should find a way to dispute them and to select those which resist all well-founded objections. The central argument of my thesis is that a dialectical theory of philosophical games is able to offer us such a way. ;In the first chapter I present an epistemic meta-theory of philosophical games. I argue that games can replace formal arguments and their introduction into philosophical discourse enlarges and re-innovates our philosophical language with such new terms as winning and losing a game, game rules and movements, etc. Using these terms several basic concepts such as truth and falsity, presupposition, and the burden of proof can be creatively reinterpreted. ;The most fundamental epistemic principles are the topics of the first part. The second part considers circular arguments ; the third focuses on conceivability arguments and the last part discusses the famous skeptical argument involving the skeptic's scenario of brains in a vat. The final chapter summarizes the advantages and shortcomings of the game-theoretical approach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary defence of the use of the concept of dignity in legal and ethical discourse. This will involve the application of three philosophical insights: (1) Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games; (2) his related approach to understanding the meanings of words (sometimes summarised as ‘meaning is use’); and (3) Jeremy Waldron’s layered understanding of property wherein ‘property’ consists in an abstract concept fleshed out in numerous particular conceptions. These three insights will be (...) applied, in the first place, to the concept of ‘dignity’, which is chosen here as a good example of a concept which is both vague and contested in legal and ethical discourse, but which can nevertheless be rendered workable by the application of the aforementioned insights. Later, the analysis will be extended briefly to some other troublesome concepts in order to demonstrate its general application. This paper is concerned primarily with formal, rather than substantive questions about dignity. Matters of content will be touched on only insofar as is necessary to illustrate and illuminate my argument about how we ought to approach (rather than answer) questions about dignity. It should be emphasised that because there is no intention of exploring substantive questions in any depth, the discussion here will not delve into the criticisms of ‘speciesism’ often levelled against the idea of ‘human dignity’. ‘Speciesist’ theories are those that claim that the status, value, or rights of human beings can be regarded as being higher than that of other animals, purely on the basis of their membership of the human species, and without justifying the distinction by pointing to any relevant capacity or characteristic possessed by all and only human beings. For a critical description of speciesism see, e.g., Singer [18] Chapter Three passim; for present purposes, the term ‘dignity’ will be used synonymously with ‘human dignity’, and concerns about speciesism will not be considered. (shrink)

Wittgenstein asks himself how many types of sentences there are, and considers the traditional grammatical answer that there are assertions, questions, and imperatives. In this fictitious language game the assertion takes the form of a complex: a question coupled with a positive answer. This appears plausible when we imagine that the development of this language game began with questions, and assertions found their way into the game only later. Wittgenstein now brings to the fore (...) the previously mentioned fact that despite the situation, we cannot say that in the fictitious language game one makes an assertion by first raising a question and then giving an affirmative answer. Wittgenstein discusses the following thought, in the formulation of which he uses the word “function,” a word that was used above to determine the way in which words are to be grouped into types. (shrink)

On the question of whether gambling behavior can be changed as result of teaching gamblers the mathematics of gambling, past studies have yielded contradictory results, and a clear conclusion has not yet been drawn. In this paper, I bring some criticisms to the empirical studies that tended to answer no to this hypothesis, regarding the sampling and laboratory testing, and I argue that an optimal mathematical scholastic intervention with the objective of preventing problem gambling is possible, by providing (...) the principles that would optimize the structure and content of the teaching module. Given the ethical aspects of the exposure of mathematical facts behind games of chance, and starting from the slots case – where the parametric design is missing, we have to draw a line between ethical and optional information with respect to the mathematical content provided by a scholastic intervention. Arguing for the role of mathematics in problem-gambling prevention and treatment, interdisciplinary research directions are drawn toward implementing an optimal mathematical module in cognitive therapies. (shrink)

Summary Language games can be opening and narrowing. On the base of this double sense my paper compares the language game of divine love according to Franz Rosenzweig and Karl Barth. They were contemporaries not only regarding their early publications. Both discovered revelation in the face of liberal theology which regarded it as a problematic, mythological concept. However, this similarity is contradicted by difference, based in the Christological dogma which can have a tendency to narrow the common basis of (...) the two authors’ theological language game. There is also an anachronism, brought about by Rosenzweig’s anticipation of the concept of analogy which Barth came to years later. The emphasis of my paper lies on the question how the opening function of theological language games can be promoted. In Rosenzweig’s “speaking thinking” there can be found a trace to an answer. (shrink)

The descriptive complexity of a problem is the complexity of describing the problem in some logical formalism. One of the few techniques for proving separation results in descriptive complexity is to make use of games on graphs played between two players, called the spoiler and the duplicator. There are two types of these games, which differ in the order in which the spoiler and duplicator make various moves. In one of these games, the rules seem to be tilted towards favoring (...) the duplicator. These seemingly more favorable rules make it easier to prove separation results, since separation results are proven by showing that the duplicator has a winning strategy. In this paper, the relationship between these games is investigated. It is shown that in one sense, the two games are equivalent. Specifically, each family of graphs used in one game to prove a separation result can in principle be used in the other game to prove the same result. This answers an open question of Ajtai and the author from 1989. It is also shown that in another sense, the games are not equivalent, in that there are situations where the spoiler requires strictly more resources to win one game than the other game. This makes formal the informal statement that one game is easier for the duplicator to win. (shrink)

This paper has three goals. The first is to introduce the “knowledge game”, a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some intriguing philosophical questions. The second is to apply the knowledge game as an informative test to discriminate between conscious (human) and conscious-less agents (zombies and robots), depending on which version of the game they can win. And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to (...) Dretske’s question “how do you know you are not a zombie?”. (shrink)

To what extent can we doubt certainties? How are certainties expressed in words? Which language games convey certainty? To answer these questions we have to recall the method Wittgenstein used in his investigations. When we look at language games and forms of life as inseparable phenomena, do forms of life then provide any certainty? On the other hand, do we automatically relapse into relativism once we doubt certainties? Which formal structures underlie certainty and doubt? The book is intended to (...) answer these questions. (shrink)

This project assesses the ability of a game tutorial, “Goblin Threat” to increase university students’ ability to recognize plagiarized passages. The game tutorial covers information about how to cite properly, types and consequences of plagiarism, and the differences between paraphrasing and plagiarism. The game involves finding and clicking on “goblins” who ask questions about various aspects of plagiarism. Sound effects and entertaining visuals work to keep students’ attention. One group of 177 students enrolled in an online Psychology (...) of Adolescence course answered four multiple choice plagiarism recognition questions in the months after completing the online game tutorial while another group of over 400 students in the same online psychology course did not have access to the game tutorial, but answered the same multiple choice plagiarism recognition questions over the same period of time. The group who played the game tutorial showed an 11% improvement in recognizing plagiarized passages over the comparison group, a statistically significant difference. Results suggest the ability to keep students focused may be an important ingredient for plagiarism interventions. (shrink)

Abstract: In the course of seeking an answer to the question "How do you know you are not a zombie?" Floridi (2005) issues an ingenious, philosophically rich challenge to artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of an extremely demanding version of the so-called knowledge game (or "wise-man puzzle," or "muddy-children puzzle")—one that purportedly ensures that those who pass it are self-conscious. In this article, on behalf of (at least the logic-based variety of) AI, I take up the (...) challenge—which is to say, I try to show that this challenge can in fact be met by AI in the foreseeable future. (shrink)

We show, assuming weak large cardinals, that in the context of games of length \ with moves coming from a proper class, clopen determinacy is strictly weaker than open determinacy. The proof amounts to an analysis of a certain level of L that exists under large cardinal assumptions weaker than an inaccessible. Our argument is sufficiently general to give a family of determinacy separation results applying in any setting where the universal class is sufficiently closed; e.g., in third, seventh, or (...) \\)th order arithmetic. We also prove bounds on the strength of Borel determinacy for proper class games. These results answer questions of Gitman and Hamkins. (shrink)

In reading Wittgenstein one can, and for the most part perhaps should, treat the expression ‘language-game’ as a term of art, a more or less arbitrarily chosen item of terminology meaning something like ‘an actual or possible way of using words’. It would then be a fairly routine task to work out answers to such questions as what features of the ways a word is used are emphasized by this term of art, what philosophical purposes are served by the (...) description of primitive language-games or of variations on actual language-games, or in exactly what way those purposes are supposed to be served. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVirtual games are played by millions of people today. Almost everyone has the means to access virtual worlds in most places in the world. Virtual games are new worlds for the players waiting to be discovered. Video games in this new world are considered to be sports activities by some people, while some oppose to this conception. In this regard, philosophical approaches set out and the current state of whether video games are considered as sports activities is presented. In addition (...) to this classificatory issue an ethical one concerning the level of addiction for the players who immerse into the virtual worlds is also discussed, since the level of immersion is sometimes so high that some people die while playing video games on the computer. The answer to the question of how these video games can be so addictive is considered in relation to Johan Huizinga’s Homo ludens, and the notion of phantasm by Gilles Deleuze. It is argued that the fantasy aspect of video games is more dominant their being the... (shrink)

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a (...) central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s Investigations proposed an egalitarian view about language games, emphasizing their plurality (“language has no downtown”). Uses of words depend on the game one is playing, and may change when playing another. Furthermore, there is no privileged game dictating the rules for the others: games are as many as purposes. This view is pluralist and egalitarian, but it says little about the connection between meaning and use, and about how a set of rules is responsible for them in (...) practice. Brandom’s Making It Explicit attempted a straightforward answer to these questions, by developing Wittgensteinian insights: the primacy of social practice over meanings; the idea that meaning is use; the idea of rule–following to understand participation in social practices. Nonetheless, Brandom defended a non–Wittgensteinian conception of discursive practice: language has a “downtown”, the game of “giving and asking for reasons”. This is the idea of a normative structure of language, consisting of advancing claims and drawing inferences. By means of assertions, speakers undertake “commitments” that can be challenged/defended in terms of reasons (those successfully justified can gain “entitlement”). This game is not one among many: it is indispensable to the very idea of discursive practice. In this paper, my aim will be that of exploring the main motivations and implications of both perspectives. (shrink)

In free and open source software (FOSS), computer code is made freely accessible and can be modified by anyone. It is a creative domain with many unique features; the FOSS mode of creativity has also influenced many aspects of contemporary cultural production. In this article we identify a number of fundamental but unresolved general issues in the study of creativity, then examine the potential for the study of FOSS to inform these topics. Archival studies of the genesis of FOSS projects, (...) coupled with laboratory studies detailing the psychological processes involved in software creation, can provide converging evidence on the nature of creativity in software design. Such a research program has broad implications both for theories of creativity and for real-world innovation in software and other forms of digital cultural production. (shrink)

Individualists and externalists about language take themselves to be disagreeing about the basic subject matter of the study of language. Are linguistic facts are really facts about individuals, or really facts about language use in a community?The right answer to this question, I argue, is ‘Yes’. Both individualistic and social facts are crucial to a complete understanding of human language. The relationship between the theories inspired by these facts is analogous to the relationship between anatomy and ecology, or (...) between micro- and macro-economics: both types of facts are important objects of study in their own right, but we need a theory that accounts for the complex relationship between the two. I argue that modern extensions of the signaling-games approach of Lewis (1969) do just this, defusing the conflict while preserving the core positive insights of both sides of this debate.The upshot is that arguments for social externalism and the normativity of meaning pose no threat to individualist explanations and can be accountedfor within a naturalistic theory of language. A good externalist theory will make crucial reference to individualistic facts, but go further by examining language users’ interactions in a systematic way. (shrink)

Parity games are combinatorial representations of closed Boolean μ-terms. By adding to them draw positions, they have been organized by Arnold and Santocanale [3] and [27] into a μ-calculus whose standard interpretation is over the class of all complete lattices. As done by Berwanger et al. [8] and [9] for the propositional modal μ-calculus, it is possible to classify parity games into levels of a hierarchy according to the number of fixed-point variables. We ask whether this hierarchy collapses w.r.t. the (...) standard interpretation. We answer this question negatively by providing, for each n≥1, a parity game Gn with these properties: it unravels to a μ-term built up with n fixed-point variables, it is not semantically equivalent to any game with strictly less than n−2 fixed-point variables. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophers, Carers, and Psychodramatic GamesCorinne Gal (bio), Alexandre Chapy (bio), Marielle Fau (bio), and Muriel Guaveia (bio)Dear Jonathan D. Moreno,Thank you for the honor of taking the time to comment on the work we do. It is very meaningful for us to be able to talk with you.We, too, see a big difference between philosophers and carers (in the broadest sense) who deal with the suffering of patients and (...) try to find methods to help them. But, if theory is at the service of the clinic, it becomes a formidable asset to refine our therapeutic methods and better understand what is happening to our patients.Indeed, patients suffering from psychosis, severe neurosis … are difficult to accompany and “recalcitrant to therapy by word alone” to use your terms. It is on this point that Ludwig Binswanger distanced himself from psychoanalysis. Binswanger ran a sanatorium in Switzerland (the Bellevue Clinic) and took in patients suffering from this type of psychological pathology. Aware that “the divan” and the analysis of the transference (unconscious) made little progress, he sought other ways of understanding his patients. The work of Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement, and then the work of Martin Heidegger1 fascinated him because they attempted to answer fundamental questions about being. The patients we work with ask themselves and us the same question: What is being? How can we feel existence within ourselves? Binswanger then created daseinsanalysis as an analysis of existence in which he was able to develop, among other dimensions, what he called “artists’ gestures,” including the possibility of (physical) contact with the patients. The body regained existential importance in the therapy.There are also strong similarities between psychiatric phenomenology and the work of Jacob Levy Moreno (2014, p. 214). We would like to quote your work: “ Nonetheless, there were links between them. Heidegger and J.L. shared preoccupation with personal authenticity and meaning [End Page 230] just enough to be considered part of the trends that led to postwar existentialism and fueled the new humanistic psychology, NTL, and encounter groups.”Jacob Levy Moreno’s working methods are much more powerful, allowing us to work as closely as possible with bodily feelings, since the body involved in the action is so present in psychodrama. Because, to this question of being posed by our patients, is linked the body as a felt, sensing body: the body that I am (which differs from the object body). Schizophrenic patients often express, and this is a terrible suffering, that they no longer feel anything, that they no longer feel they exist, that they no longer feel emotions or feelings. They do not know how to be in the world and with others. For us it is a fundamental symptom, as much as hallucinations. We link it to the loss of natural evidence (Blankenburg, 1991), the loss of contact with reality (Minkowski, 1929). Most of the time, in psychodrama, we “externalize” what the patients feel in different roles played by players, which allows us to work at the heart of each person’s difficulties in interaction. Trained in psychodrama by Anne Ancelin Schützenberger, we have to our credit a set of techniques to support the expression of psychodramatic play, a sort of “toolbox.” Depending on the context, the moment of the patient, our own state, we open our toolbox and try to choose and use the technique that best fits the needs of the game, of what we understand about the difficulty of the protagonist or the group. We do not do anything systematic, we are craftsmen. We have chosen to present a very simple game, without any technique used, except for the initial soliloquy, with a stabilized patient suffering from paucisymptomatic forms of schizophrenia. This is to demonstrate how the possibility of encounter, constitutive of existence, is a fundamental dimension of psychodrama.We thank you for the examples you have given us, they will be a source of inspiration and will fill our toolbox.To John Nolte:We thank you very much for your comments which honor us.The aim of the article was to present how the encounter in... (shrink)

Competitive quiz shows, and Jeopardy! in particular, occupy a unique place among TV game shows. The most successful Jeopardy! contestants—Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, Frank Sparenberg, and so on—have appeared on late night talk shows, been given book contracts, and been interviewed by major newspapers. This sort of treatment is substantially different than, say, the treatment that the winners of The Price is Right or Deal or No Deal are afforded. The distinctive status of quiz shows is evidenced in other (...) ways as well; for instance, consider the widespread public outrage that accompanied the discovery of fixed quiz shows in the 1950s of the fact that, when IBM wanted to find a task to test the latest developments of artificial intelligence, they chose the game of Jeopardy. In this essay, I’ll take a look at Jeopardy! as an exemplar of a certain sort of game, and will suggest that part of what gives Jeopardy! its distinctive status is that it is a qualitatively good game—that is, it is a game that that fulfills just those functions a game is supposed to fulfill. I’ll begin by showing how Jeopardy! meets Bernard Suits’ (1967, 1988, 2005) definition of games, according to which games are characterized as activities that have certain sorts of rules and in which participants are required to have the right attitude toward these rules. Among other things, I’ll talk about the role played by some of Jeopardy’s distinctive rules (“remember to phrase your answer in the form of a question”) and about the possible differences a monetary reward makes to game players’ attitudes. I’ll then go on to talk about what distinguishes Jeopardy! from other, superficially similar sorts of games. I’ll concentrate on three factors in particular: (1) the fact that the skills required by Jeopardy! have value outside of the game, (2) the fact that observers in Jeopardy! can “play along” with the contestants on TV, and (3) the fact that success in the game is determined, to a very great extent, by the skills of the participant and not by other facts (such as luck). To close, I’ll talk more generally about the distinction between good games and not-so-good games, and will discuss why it is that good games are worth taking seriously. In this section, I’ll discuss some recent work on the value of games and sports, and will make some suggestions about how these accounts might be tailored to account for the specific virtues of a game like Jeopardy. (shrink)

In 2009 Dutch judges convicted several minors for theft of virtual items in the virtual worlds of online multiplayer computer games. From a legal point of view these convictions gave rise to the question whether virtual items should count as “objects” that can be “stolen” under criminal law. This legal question has both an ontological and a moral component. The question whether or not virtual items count as “objects” that can be “stolen” is an ontological question. (...) The question whether or not they should count as such under criminal law is of a moral nature. The purpose of this paper is to answer both the ontological question and the moral question underlying the legal question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS THERE A LANGUAGE-GAME THAT EVEN THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST CAN PLAY? by Steven Fuller After reading A. J. Cascardi's fascinating "Skepticism and Deconstruction," I am led to ask the question that "entitles" this response.1 The answer I want to give is "yes," but Cascardi has made the task more difficult than I would have liked. In brief, he has dissociated deconstruction from all philosophical pursuits, including skepticism, (...) which it superficially resembles. I shall proceed, first, by reasserting deconstruction 's skeptical credentials and, then, by showing how these credentials enable the deconstructionist to play an interesting language-game. I Cascardi's thesis is most vividly stated in the following passage: But the deconstructionist, wrongly thought of as a skeptic, has no idea of what an epistemology counter to his uncertainties and indeterminacies would look like. This is because he is out to question the very axis ofwhich skepticism and epistemology are the opposite poles. Because his questioning shows up as a denial of the principle of non-contradiction, one is likely to think that deconstruction is a form of irrationalism. (p. 7) For all its forcefulness, this statement suggests that Cascardi may have fallen prey to a Cartesian ruse involving the meaning of "skepticism." A coherent history of skepticism can be told that extends from Sextus Empiricus's Outlines ofPyrrhonism (c. 200 AD) to Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary (c. 1700) without ever mentioning Descartes. The theme 104 Steven fuller105 of this history would be that no claims to knowledge are certifiable. In a more modern vein, we would say that no proposition has a determinate truth-value. The skeptics in our history would be presented as moral philosophers instructing their readers on how to live in a world in which they can never tell the true from the false — a world in which doubt is the natural attitude. The paraphrase is crucial because virtually all philosophers — most notably Husserl — have regarded doubt as unnatural, a psychic tension that must somehow be resolved. And just as hunger motivates the drive for food, it has usually been assumed that doubt motivates the drive for method. Whereas food sustains the physical needs of the sentient being as it reduces hunger, so too method sustains the cognitive needs of the rational being as it reduces doubt. Our skeptics have perennially noted that to think of all knowledge claims as certifiably true or false would be to think that nature answers us directly upon being addressed. In less metaphorical terms, we would be speaking a language whose predicates pick out natural kinds. The "dogmatists," as Sextus and Bayle liked to call their opponents (we would now call them "foundationalists"), could then easily conceive of how nature appears to us as nature's response to our utterances. To drive home the dogmatists' intentionalist stance toward nature, instead of "how nature appears to us," we might say "how nature represents itselfto us." In the case of truths, nature represents itself transparently, while in the case of falsehoods, representation has gone awry: either we misspoke or nature deceived us. To put the blame on ourselves is to call for a revision in method; to put the blame on nature is to suspect that an evil designer, a Cartesian demon, is behind the faulty appearances. The point, of course, is that one needs to be a dogmatist in order to have Descartes's more demonic thoughts. The classical skeptic, who held the language-world link to be purely conventional, used the uncertifiability of knowledge claims as an argument for denying any design whatsoever to nature — either for good or for ill. Descartes muddled things, however, when he interpreted the skeptical stance as claiming that all knowledge claims may turn out to be false. From the First Meditation, it is never made clear why we should worry about the Cartesian demon (and hence send him into cognitive exile as quickly as possible). Presumably, the concern arises from the possibility of discovering that the appearances are indeed illusory — that is, certifiablyfalse. This concern becomes a full-fledged anxiety once the doubter realizes that he ultimately has no control over how his doubt is resolved. In other words... (shrink)