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Armchair Arcade -> Forums -> General Discussion

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Philosophers and Videogames

Moderators: Bill Loguidice, David Torre, crcasey, Mark1970, deshrill

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Matt Barton

Tue Feb 24 2004, 06:14PM

Location: Tampa, Florida
posts 2680

I thought I'd compile a short list here of philosophers and works that might be interesting to consider in a philosophy of videogames.

1. Kant (difficult)--Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgment. Kant talks about a "manifold of the senses" through which we experience reality. You could easily talk about the "interface" through which we perceive the game world. Kant goes into great detail about all of the implications of this, and I'm almost certain it'd produce some fascinating discourse on videogames.

2. Plato (easy)--The Phaedrus, The Republic. In the Phaedrus, Plato talks about writing. His basic argument is that speech is better than writing because writing can't argue back with you--it isn't interactive...Well, text adventures are. He says much more about writing here that would also be interesting. Plato's Republic is a mine of philosophical insight that would undoubtedly prove useful. He gives an analogy of a "cave," and talks about "steps from reality" that you've probably heard about before. He invents a "world of forms" and such...It's all about the nature of reality and what objects are--again, it'd be fascinating to apply this discourse to videogames.

3. Aristotle (moderate): I've already explored Aristotle's connections to videogaming through catharsis, but there are other works that could prove fertile.

4. Husserl/Heidegger/Merle-Peanty/Levinas etc (nearly impenetrable). The phenomenologists have a very complicated view of reality that would probably lend itself easily to a discussion of videogames. This is some complex philosophy that isn't at all user-friendly, but someone comfortable with the jargon and keyterms could blaze away here. These guys are mostly concerned with "things" and "how they show up for us." There is talk of "intentional consciousness," "anxiety," and so on.

5. Satre/Beauvoir (easy): Interesting discussions here about free will, the lack of ultimate criteria, and 'otherness' (especially in beauvoir) that would be easy to apply to videogame theory. For instance, it'd a simple matter to say that the avatar in a videogame is the "other," and some videogame theorists have already taken this step and are writing good articles with it.

6. Lacan (nearly impenetrable): French psycho-analyst who talks a lot about "the real," the mirror stage, and so on. He is concerned, basically, with the same stuff as Husserl/Heidegger and the like, but he takes a much more psycho-analytical approach (i.e., talking about child development and so on). He's famous for saying that the unconscious is "structured like a language."

7. Ben Johnson, Racine: Not philosophers, but literary critics with some interestin theories about realism on the stage that could transfer well to a discussion of videogame realism.

8. Descartes (Discourse on Method) "I think therefore I am." I haven't read Descartes directly, but all the philosophers refer to him. He posits "being" as the first philosophy; i.e., we start from our awareness that we ARE and go from there. Pretty abstract stuff, but there are connections.

Matt Barton

Buck Feris

Fri Feb 27 2004, 06:06PM

Armchair Arcade Editor

Location: Louisville, KY
posts 1542

I was wondering if you had ever attempted Phenomenology. "Nearly impenetrable" is a good description. Phenomenologists are like the boss level for philosophy.

I was wondering if you could explain how these theories relate to video games. I actually took a class on Phenomenology in college. (Be advised, this does not mean I know anything about it.) It was just an introduction, but we attempted writing 'descriptions' of things and whatnot. But I do not know how this would lend itself to videogames. In fact wouldn't a phenonemologist balk at a video game in that it is hopelessly detached from reality? Or does the video game itself have something to offer...not as a representation, but as an experience in itself?

Buck Feris - Armchair Arcade Editor - buck@armchairarcade

Matt Barton

Sat Feb 28 2004, 08:49AM

Location: Tampa, Florida
posts 2680

I think the player/avatar relationship makes a lot of sense from a phenemonological perspective. That's where I'd begin; the human playing the game is like the avatar's ego. However, the player can only learn about the gameworld through that avatar's senses. You'd have to imagine a game in which literally all the player knew about the gameworld stemmed from the senses of the avatar (a game like Deja Vu, for instance). Through our experience of playing the game (and all past games we have played) we develop a set of anticipations that affect our perception of the game.

A lot of this makes sense in the context of a game like Shadowgate. We all that the "torch" in the game isn't an "actual torch." It's not like we can pluck it off the screen and light our cavern with it. However, it is a torch for the avatar. In "reality" the torch is nothing but a set of 1s and 0s sitting somewhere in the rom. Thus, here is a clear example of how "phenomena" work in regards to senses and experience. If you step back and look at objects in your room and think, well, they look real to me, but they're really just 1s and 0s for Being, then you are starting to get there.

Heidegger talks a lot about "dasein," which amounts to a human being questioning what it means to be. Obviously, Pac-Man is not dasein because he never stops to ponder why the heck he's eating pellets and being chased by ghosts. However, the player controlling pac-man can be dasein, especially if he's thinking thoughts along the lines of, "I wonder if I'm just a pac-man being controlled by some god."

Here are my professor's notes on phen.:

Phen. is a particular method. In opposition to naturalism, which simply assumes the truth of physicalism and causality, phen. tries to describe the way thinsg actually show up for us within our experience. Husserl held that it is presuppositionless, free of any assumptions made in the sciences and in traditional philosophy. It is interested in revealing the evidence we have for our beliefs by showing how beliefs are constituted within consciousness itself.

The natural attitude of everyday and life is characterized by naive objectivism, the assumption that there is a world of objects "out there" in the spatio-temporally extended universe. Phen. requires that we bracket or set aside such naive, unjustified beliefs. Therefore, Husserl says we must undertake a phen. reduction or epoche, through which we bracket our ordinary assumptions about the presence of physical objects in the world. Instead of examining objects, we examine what Kant called "phenomena," that is, objects as they present themselves to us within the sphere of consciousness, or, in other words, objects as they are for us, not as they are (presumed to be) indepedent of us. Phen. is a careful, systematic study of experiencing, not of things.

In the epoche, we also bracket our ordinary beliefs about ourselves as organisms and as people with a psychology and biography. We examine experience not as mine (where this means "belonging to a particular mind"), but rather as given in consciousness as such. Hence, Husserl develops a sort of "no ownership" theory of experience--it is not mine or yours or anyone's in particular--it just is "experiencing."

What is presented within consciousness is called intuition. We have an intuitive awareness of our own conscious activities and their products. A careful description of consciousness reveals that conscious acts (beliving, doubting, wishing, remembering, loving, hating, needing, etc.) all have the character of constituting experienced objects in distinctive ways. For example, my act of fearing something has the effect of constituting the Being of what I fear as something threatening. If I fear Osama, I regard Osama as a fearsome being. So the Being of whatever is presented in consciousness is always a product of my constituting activity. I give it a particular meaning (Being) though my way of taking it. Husserl says that, since I can always change my way of taking anything, I am "the abolustely self-responsible source of everything that is Being for me." I freely choose the meaning of Being of the things int he world and myself as ego in the world.

Every intentional act has two main components. There is the intentional act (noesis)-the distinctive way I take the thing in this particular orientation toward things (as desired or as hated or as in doubt). Then there is the meaning (noema) I employ in taking the thing in that particular way (the meaning 'dangerous person, 3-D, enduringly present object' or "image in my field of consciousness caused by mind itself." ) Whereas acts are particular and subjective, meanings are universally valid and objective (all people think the same basic thing when they think "human being" or "material object" or "dangerous guy.)

For physical objects, the function of the meaning is to take the information given us in intuition (for perception, the hyletic data of raw color and sound) and organize it into a set of anticipations about what to expect in the flow of experience (that moving my head will lead to a fluid flow of perspectives on the material thing that reveals ever new aspects). If the set of anticipations is fulfilled by the flow of experience, then we judge that the meaning ascribed to what is experienced is true. If the set of anticipations is not fulfilled, then the meaning (noema) explodes, and I have to admit that my belief was wrong (e.g., the belief that I was perceiving a physical object is judged false). This is how evidence works in making judgments about physical objects. For nonphysical objects, we use quite different meanings (noemata) in our constituting (meaning-giving) activity.

The professor goes on to talk about Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Satre & Beauvoir. However, I'm tired of typing.

[ Edited Sat Feb 28 2004, 09:56AM ]

Matt Barton

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