Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn’t just create a world; they create who you w... more Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn’t just create a world; they create who you will be in that world. They tell you what abilities to use and what goals to take on. In other words, they specify a form of agency. Games work in the medium of agency. And to play them, we take on alternate agencies and submerge ourselves in them.
What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over.
Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art — the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity.
And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency.
Games are a distinctive form of art-and very different from many traditional arts. Games work in ... more Games are a distinctive form of art-and very different from many traditional arts. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers don't just tell stories or create environments. They tell us what our abilities will be in the game. They set our motivations , by setting the scoring system and specifying the win-conditions. Game designers sculpt temporary agencies for us to occupy. And when we play games, we adopt these designed agencies, submerging ourselves in them, and taking on their specified ends for a while. Games constitute a library of agencies-and by exploring them, we can learn new ways to inhabit our own agency. When we play games, we engage in a special form of agential fluidity. We can absorb ourselves temporarily in alternate, constructed agencies. Games make use of that capacity to record different practical mindsets. Games turn out to be our technology for communicating forms of agency.
Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment ... more Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Retweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests.
In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transp... more In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency-that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to nonexperts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption-but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual's capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust-if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public-then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. In her 2002 BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a biting criticism of one of the ethical presumptions of modern life. People think that trust and transparency go together, says O'Neill. And they think that transparency is wholly good. But actually, she says, trust and transparency are deeply opposed.
The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understand... more The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early-before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let's first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its dis-parate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies.
Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us viv... more Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure.
We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food... more We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized.
(This is a pre-print. Please cite the final version, forthcoming in Ergo) Our life with art is su... more (This is a pre-print. Please cite the final version, forthcoming in Ergo) Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don't just trust one another's aesthetic testimony; we trust one another's aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic sincerity. We trust in another's aesthetic sincerity when we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons-rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience's needs. Why do we care so much about an artist's sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination.
The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the... more The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – or, as I call them, the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts.
Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals... more Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. I suggest that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game-play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end.
There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, ... more There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. Our attempts at aesthetic judgments aim at correctness. On the other hand, we demand autonomy in aesthetic appreciation. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. How can we resolve this tension? The best explanation, I suggest, is that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn't the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn't the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of our practice of aesthetic appreciation. First, the practice of aesthetic appreciation seems deeply cognitive. We seem guided by an interest in getting things right. We not only look at art; we investigate it. We form trial judgments and then go back for more, re-watching and re-reading to make sure we've caught all the details. We talk about the reasons for our judgments, point out details to one another, and argue about what's truly great. The way we go about aesthetic conversation and aesthetic investigation seems to indicate that our aesthetic judgments are aimed at the truth. At the same time, we seem committed to principles of individuality and autonomy in aesthetic appreciation. For one, we seem to think that, in aesthetic appreciation, we must
Most theories of trust presume that trust is a conscious attitude that can be directed at only ot... more Most theories of trust presume that trust is a conscious attitude that can be directed at only other agents. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is not simply to rely on something, but to rely on it unquestion-ingly. It is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. To trust, then, is to set up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world-to permit external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one's internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects. When I trust my climbing rope, I climb while putting questions of its reliability out of mind. Many people now trust, in this sense, complex technologies such as search algorithms and online calendars. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a nor-matively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Such betrayal is grounded, not in considerations of inter-agential cooperation, but in considerations of functional integration. Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency-for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency.
Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. A neighborhood mural calling for a ... more Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. A neighborhood mural calling for a community to take care of itself, a patriotic statue — these speak to a group, urging it to adopt a particular value or stance. In some cases, art can play an even more integral role in the inner lives of groups: art can be part of how groups think to themselves and how groups commit themselves to difficult-to-express values. I focus on monuments as a case study and prime exemplar. Monuments, I claim, can function as commitments to group values. They are a way for groups to declare values and principles in a publicly accessible form, for the sake of long-term action guidance. This account weighs in favor of two surprising theses. First, it demonstrates the existence of art for groups — that is, art that is primarily addressed to collective entities rather than to individuals. Second, the account shows how art can make group emotions possible, even if those groups lack any kind of emergent group consciousness. Art can do so by making emotions sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Group agents can, via a group decision process, select an artwork and designate its emotional content as action guiding. Monuments and their kin can thus function as an artistic equivalent to a constitution or a mission statement. They can permit groups to guide themselves with values and principles too subtle to be captured in explicit propositions.
Discussion of the phenomena of post-truth and fake news often implicates the closed epistemic net... more Discussion of the phenomena of post-truth and fake news often implicates the closed epistemic networks of social media. The recent conversation has, however, blurred two distinct social epistemic phenomena. An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure in which other relevant voices have been left out, perhaps accidentally. An echo chamber is a social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively excluded and discredited. Members of epistemic bubbles lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structures requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one’s belief system.
What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which do not involve t... more What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which do not involve the violation of property rights? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared practices that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in some cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together.
Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insi... more Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author's intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us how to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication , we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a "prescriptive ontology." A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game's essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What's more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play.
I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what... more I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities.
In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains... more In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains has led to an intellectual crisis. Each field of human knowledge has its own specialized jargon, knowledge, and form of reasoning, and each is mutually incomprehensible to the next. Furthermore, says Millgram, modern scientific practical arguments are draped across many fields. Thus, there is no person in a position to assess the success of such a practical argument for themselves. This arrangement virtually guarantees that mistakes will accrue whenever we engage in cross-field practical reasoning. Furthermore, Millgram argues, hyper-specialization makes intellectual autonomy extremely difficult. Our only hope is to provide better translations between the fields, in order to achieve intellectual transparency. I argue against Millgram's pessimistic conclusion about intellectual autonomy, and against his suggested solution of translation. Instead, I take his analysis to reveal that there are actually several very distinct forms intellectual autonomy that are significantly in tension. One familiar kind is direct autonomy, where we seek to understand arguments and reasons for ourselves. Another kind is delegational autonomy, where we seek to find others to invest with our intellectual trust when we cannot understand. A third is management autonomy, where we seek to encapsulate fields, in order to manage their overall structure and connectivity. Intellectual transparency will help us achieve direct autonomy, but many intellectual circumstances require that we exercise delegational and management autonomy. However, these latter forms of autonomy require us to give up on transparency.
What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is
the value of playing games? Sever... more What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is
the value of playing games? Several different philosophical sub disciplines 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.
The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on a very narrow set of cases. This... more The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on a very narrow set of cases. This paper first broadens the sorts of cases under consideration, especially the wide variety of practical uses for aesthetic trust - where we substantively follow the aesthetic recommendation, instruction, or advice of another. These new cases do not yield a simple optimism about aesthetic testimony. Rather, they reveal a puzzlingly assymetrical structure in our intuitions. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life.
These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I consider a number of alternate accounts, and suggest that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit. This gives us the following explanation of our odd intuitions: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful.
Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn’t just create a world; they create who you w... more Games are a unique art form. The game designer doesn’t just create a world; they create who you will be in that world. They tell you what abilities to use and what goals to take on. In other words, they specify a form of agency. Games work in the medium of agency. And to play them, we take on alternate agencies and submerge ourselves in them.
What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over.
Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art — the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity.
And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency.
Games are a distinctive form of art-and very different from many traditional arts. Games work in ... more Games are a distinctive form of art-and very different from many traditional arts. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers don't just tell stories or create environments. They tell us what our abilities will be in the game. They set our motivations , by setting the scoring system and specifying the win-conditions. Game designers sculpt temporary agencies for us to occupy. And when we play games, we adopt these designed agencies, submerging ourselves in them, and taking on their specified ends for a while. Games constitute a library of agencies-and by exploring them, we can learn new ways to inhabit our own agency. When we play games, we engage in a special form of agential fluidity. We can absorb ourselves temporarily in alternate, constructed agencies. Games make use of that capacity to record different practical mindsets. Games turn out to be our technology for communicating forms of agency.
Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment ... more Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Retweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests.
In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transp... more In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency-that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to nonexperts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption-but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual's capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust-if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public-then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. In her 2002 BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O'Neill offers a biting criticism of one of the ethical presumptions of modern life. People think that trust and transparency go together, says O'Neill. And they think that transparency is wholly good. But actually, she says, trust and transparency are deeply opposed.
The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understand... more The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early-before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let's first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its dis-parate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies.
Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us viv... more Twitter makes conversation into something like a game. It scores our communication, giving us vivid and quantified feedback, via Likes, Retweets, and Follower counts. But this gamification doesn’t just increase our motivation to communicate; it changes the very nature of the activity. Games are more satisfying than ordinary life precisely because game-goals are simpler, cleaner, and easier to apply. Twitter is thrilling precisely because its goals have been artificially clarified and narrowed. When we buy into Twitter’s gamification, then our values shift from the complex and pluralistic values of communication, to the narrower quest for popularity and virality. Twitter’s gamification bears some resemblance with the phenomena of echo chambers and moral outrage porn. In all these phenomena, we are instrumentalizing our ends for hedonistic reasons. We have shifted our aims in an activity, not because the new aims are more valuable, but in exchange for extra pleasure.
We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food... more We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized.
(This is a pre-print. Please cite the final version, forthcoming in Ergo) Our life with art is su... more (This is a pre-print. Please cite the final version, forthcoming in Ergo) Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don't just trust one another's aesthetic testimony; we trust one another's aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic sincerity. We trust in another's aesthetic sincerity when we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons-rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience's needs. Why do we care so much about an artist's sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination.
The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the... more The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – or, as I call them, the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts.
Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals... more Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. I suggest that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game-play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end.
There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, ... more There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. Our attempts at aesthetic judgments aim at correctness. On the other hand, we demand autonomy in aesthetic appreciation. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. How can we resolve this tension? The best explanation, I suggest, is that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn't the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn't the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of our practice of aesthetic appreciation. First, the practice of aesthetic appreciation seems deeply cognitive. We seem guided by an interest in getting things right. We not only look at art; we investigate it. We form trial judgments and then go back for more, re-watching and re-reading to make sure we've caught all the details. We talk about the reasons for our judgments, point out details to one another, and argue about what's truly great. The way we go about aesthetic conversation and aesthetic investigation seems to indicate that our aesthetic judgments are aimed at the truth. At the same time, we seem committed to principles of individuality and autonomy in aesthetic appreciation. For one, we seem to think that, in aesthetic appreciation, we must
Most theories of trust presume that trust is a conscious attitude that can be directed at only ot... more Most theories of trust presume that trust is a conscious attitude that can be directed at only other agents. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is not simply to rely on something, but to rely on it unquestion-ingly. It is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. To trust, then, is to set up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world-to permit external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one's internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects. When I trust my climbing rope, I climb while putting questions of its reliability out of mind. Many people now trust, in this sense, complex technologies such as search algorithms and online calendars. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a nor-matively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Such betrayal is grounded, not in considerations of inter-agential cooperation, but in considerations of functional integration. Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency-for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency.
Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. A neighborhood mural calling for a ... more Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. A neighborhood mural calling for a community to take care of itself, a patriotic statue — these speak to a group, urging it to adopt a particular value or stance. In some cases, art can play an even more integral role in the inner lives of groups: art can be part of how groups think to themselves and how groups commit themselves to difficult-to-express values. I focus on monuments as a case study and prime exemplar. Monuments, I claim, can function as commitments to group values. They are a way for groups to declare values and principles in a publicly accessible form, for the sake of long-term action guidance. This account weighs in favor of two surprising theses. First, it demonstrates the existence of art for groups — that is, art that is primarily addressed to collective entities rather than to individuals. Second, the account shows how art can make group emotions possible, even if those groups lack any kind of emergent group consciousness. Art can do so by making emotions sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Group agents can, via a group decision process, select an artwork and designate its emotional content as action guiding. Monuments and their kin can thus function as an artistic equivalent to a constitution or a mission statement. They can permit groups to guide themselves with values and principles too subtle to be captured in explicit propositions.
Discussion of the phenomena of post-truth and fake news often implicates the closed epistemic net... more Discussion of the phenomena of post-truth and fake news often implicates the closed epistemic networks of social media. The recent conversation has, however, blurred two distinct social epistemic phenomena. An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure in which other relevant voices have been left out, perhaps accidentally. An echo chamber is a social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively excluded and discredited. Members of epistemic bubbles lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structures requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one’s belief system.
What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which do not involve t... more What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation which do not involve the violation of property rights? We propose that such restrictions can be grounded by considerations of intimacy. Consider the familiar phenomenon of interpersonal intimacy. Certain aspects of personal life and interpersonal relationships are afforded various protections in virtue of being intimate. We argue that an analogous phenomenon exists at the level of large groups. In many cases, members of a group engage in shared practices that contribute to a sense of common identity, such as wearing certain hair or clothing styles or performing a certain style of music. Participation in such practices can generate relations of group intimacy, which can ground certain prerogatives in much the same way that interpersonal intimacy can. One such prerogative is making what we call an appropriation claim. An appropriation claim is a request from a group member that non-members refrain from appropriating a given element of the group’s culture. Ignoring appropriation claims can constitute a breach of intimacy. But, we argue, just as for the prerogatives of interpersonal intimacy, in some cases there is no prior fact of the matter about whether the appropriation of a given cultural practice constitutes a breach of intimacy. It depends on what the group decides together.
Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insi... more Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author's intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us how to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication , we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a "prescriptive ontology." A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game's essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What's more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play.
I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what... more I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities.
In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains... more In The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram argues that the hyper-specialization of expert domains has led to an intellectual crisis. Each field of human knowledge has its own specialized jargon, knowledge, and form of reasoning, and each is mutually incomprehensible to the next. Furthermore, says Millgram, modern scientific practical arguments are draped across many fields. Thus, there is no person in a position to assess the success of such a practical argument for themselves. This arrangement virtually guarantees that mistakes will accrue whenever we engage in cross-field practical reasoning. Furthermore, Millgram argues, hyper-specialization makes intellectual autonomy extremely difficult. Our only hope is to provide better translations between the fields, in order to achieve intellectual transparency. I argue against Millgram's pessimistic conclusion about intellectual autonomy, and against his suggested solution of translation. Instead, I take his analysis to reveal that there are actually several very distinct forms intellectual autonomy that are significantly in tension. One familiar kind is direct autonomy, where we seek to understand arguments and reasons for ourselves. Another kind is delegational autonomy, where we seek to find others to invest with our intellectual trust when we cannot understand. A third is management autonomy, where we seek to encapsulate fields, in order to manage their overall structure and connectivity. Intellectual transparency will help us achieve direct autonomy, but many intellectual circumstances require that we exercise delegational and management autonomy. However, these latter forms of autonomy require us to give up on transparency.
What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is
the value of playing games? Sever... more What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is
the value of playing games? Several different philosophical sub disciplines 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.
The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on a very narrow set of cases. This... more The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on a very narrow set of cases. This paper first broadens the sorts of cases under consideration, especially the wide variety of practical uses for aesthetic trust - where we substantively follow the aesthetic recommendation, instruction, or advice of another. These new cases do not yield a simple optimism about aesthetic testimony. Rather, they reveal a puzzlingly assymetrical structure in our intuitions. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life.
These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I consider a number of alternate accounts, and suggest that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit. This gives us the following explanation of our odd intuitions: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful.
Adapting Bernard Suits' account of game-play, we can show that, in games, competition can be conv... more Adapting Bernard Suits' account of game-play, we can show that, in games, competition can be converted into cooperation. Suits says that to play a game is to voluntarily take up unnecessary obstacles for the sake of overcoming them. Thus, in games, we can become each others' desired obstacles. Others in the philosophy of sport have argued for such cooperation, but typically but the weight of conversion on player consent or player intention. I argue for a more distributed model of conversion, in which player consent, proper match-ups of player temperament and skill, features of game-design, and psychological fit of players with game design all contribute to the conversion process. As a result, conversion isn't guaranteed, even when all players have consented. Finally, I use the conversion model to argue against the popular view in philosophy of sports that the purpose of sport is the display or development of excellence; instead, the social function of converting competition into cooperation is just as plausible an account of the purpose of sport.
Should the existence of moral disagreement reduce one's confidence in one's moral judgments? Many... more Should the existence of moral disagreement reduce one's confidence in one's moral judgments? Many have claimed that it should not. They claim that we should be morally self-sufficient: that one's moral judgment and moral confidence ought to be determined entirely one's own reasoning. Others' moral beliefs ought not impact one's own in any way. I claim that moral self-sufficiency is wrong. Moral self-sufficiency ignores the degree to which moral judgment is a fallible cognitive process like all the rest. In this paper, I take up two possible routes to moral selfsufficiency.
A description of what my writing process process is like, which is really a story of professional... more A description of what my writing process process is like, which is really a story of professional despair, boredom, and how I engineered a process to pull myself out of it.
An argument for writing fun, strange, open-ended exams for your students, so that their last expe... more An argument for writing fun, strange, open-ended exams for your students, so that their last experience of philosophy will be one of excitement, curiosity, and open-mindedness.
A workshop sequence, in which students workshop their papers in stages -- first in outline, then ... more A workshop sequence, in which students workshop their papers in stages -- first in outline, then in draft.
Jennifer Lena's new book, Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts-an author... more Jennifer Lena's new book, Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts-an authoritative, eye-opening, and astonishingly detailed look at the power struggle over the boundaries of art, as conducted over approximately the last two centuries of American cultural life. At the center is Lena's interest in the legitimation of new art forms. How do modern dance, photography, graffiti, tap dance, and comics go from mere pop forms to widely accepted forms of art?
The pleasures of rock climbing and the pleasures of philosophy turn out to be strangely similar. ... more The pleasures of rock climbing and the pleasures of philosophy turn out to be strangely similar. Most non-climbers have the wrong idea about climbing — it is, in the popular imagination, a particularly thuggish way of courting death. Before I'd actually tried it, my mental image of climbing was some kid of vague blend of pull-ups, screaming and gargling Red Bull. But it turns out that rock climbing is this subtle, refined and often hyper-intellectual sport.
We are in an age of flourishing and innovation for games. Games are getting more creative, more b... more We are in an age of flourishing and innovation for games. Games are getting more creative, more biting, more innovative and just plain stranger. The aesthetic headliners these days are usually the independent, self-consciously arty wing of computer games. Take, for example, the intentionally queasy Papers, Please, a computer game in which the you play a border security guard in a fictional Eastern European country, tasked with endlessly scrutinizing paperwork, looking for forgeries, incentivized by the game with promotions and rewards for shutting out desperate immigrants.
Many theorists suppose suppose that game-play is unified; that is, that there is basically only o... more Many theorists suppose suppose that game-play is unified; that is, that there is basically only one sort of game-play. I would like to argue, instead that there are multiple forms of game-play. What's more, I'll argue, once we see the multiple forms, we'll something even more important: that game-play is fluid -that the form of play is not fixed by the game, but chosen by the player. It is up to the player whether World of Warcraft is a game of imaginative role-playing, or a competitive game of scoring more points, or some mixture of the two. The presumption of the uni-dimensionality of play has masked a really interesting phenomenon: that the basic form of play is voluntary and highly variable, even inside one game.
This is my claim: games are a form of landscape. I'll admit that this isn't the gospel truth, exa... more This is my claim: games are a form of landscape. I'll admit that this isn't the gospel truth, exactly, but it is an exceedingly productive metaphor. Games are constructed spaces, built to support satisfying human interaction, and human choice. They are a space, under a certain abstracted, but useful, notion of space.
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Books by C. Thi Nguyen
What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over.
Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art — the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity.
And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency.
Papers by C. Thi Nguyen
of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the
instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized.
the value of playing games? Several different philosophical sub disciplines 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.
These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I consider a number of alternate accounts, and suggest that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit. This gives us the following explanation of our odd intuitions: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful.
What can we learn about our own rationality and agency, from thinking about games? We learn that have a considerable degree of fluidity with our agency. First, we have the capacity for a peculiar sort of motivational inversion. For some of us, winning is not the point. We take on an interest in winning temporarily, so that we can play the game. Thus, we are capable of taking on temporary and disposable ends. We can submerge ourselves in alternate agencies, letting them dominate our consciousness, and then dropping them the moment the game is over.
Games are, then, a way of recording forms of agency, of encoding them in artifacts. Our games are a library of agencies. And exploring that library can help us develop our own agency and autonomy. But this technology can also be used for art. Games can sculpt our practical activity, for the sake of the beauty of our own actions. Games are part of a crucial, but overlooked category of art — the process arts. These are the arts which evoke an activity, and then ask you to appreciate your own activity.
And games are a special place where we can foster beautiful experiences of our own activity. Because our struggles, in games, can be designed to fit our capacities. Games can present a harmonious world, where our abilities fit the task, and where we pursue obvious goals and act under clear values. Games are a kind of existential balm against the difficult and exhausting value clarity of the world. But this presents a special danger. Games can be a fantasy of value clarity. And when that fantasy leaks out into the world, we can be tempted to oversimplify our enduring values. Then, the pleasures of games can seduce us away from our autonomy, and reduce our agency.
of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the
instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized.
the value of playing games? Several different philosophical sub disciplines 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.
These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I consider a number of alternate accounts, and suggest that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit. This gives us the following explanation of our odd intuitions: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful.