Welcome to Only a Game, the philosophy blog of game designer, outsider philosopher, and author Chris Bateman. Originally dealing with videogames as well as philosophy, most games-related material now appears at ihobo.com (but is also cross-linked here). All sincere – and preferably polite – comments on posts both new and old are welcome, and will elicit a reply as promptly as I am able. What's this blog about? Read on!
Why philosophy? I started out among academic scientists, but my interests and writings these days lie to a greater extent among the discussions of philosophers. I sometimes characterise my rambling nonsense as an attempt to popularise philosophy, which is to say, to bring the resources of philosophical thinkers such as Kant, Isabelle Stengers, or Kendall Walton a little bit closer to any quirky intellectual nerd who stumbles upon this site.
Why is this blog called ‘Only a Game’? I jokingly call the discussions here at this blog a non-fiction role-playing game, and this is “the Game” I sometimes refer to in posts. Also, a lot of my early philosophical endeavours were connected by the image of a game, which is perhaps unsurprising since I am also a professional game designer – I’ve worked on over forty five game projects over the last twenty five years.
What’s the point of philosophy? We experience the worlds we live in via our concepts, and the process of inspecting or adjusting our concepts is philosophy. Everyone is a philosopher sometimes, some of us just spend more time on it than others. While many philosophers have toiled upon their problems alone, I view philosophy as limited if it is not also engaged in public discourse. Wisdom lies scattered amidst the world it might inform: even when uncovered by a lone investigator, wise thoughts lack value until they are brought back to a shared space.
What do I philosophise about? My main interests in philosophy at the moment are in aesthetics and ethics, which are both expressions of our values. The conventional view of both these topics at this time is that they are subjective, which is to say, they don’t have meaning beyond individuals. This is a position I resist. If we understand the knowledge of the sciences as objective, that’s because they entail practices that ‘make objects talk’ (hence ‘objective’), but in many contexts our subjective knowledge is better equipped for dealing with the worlds we actually live in.
Why bother with aesthetics? Imagination transpires to be a key to understanding how living beings like us experience reality, a point I explored in my first philosophy book, Imaginary Games. What’s more, my studies in aesthetics feed into my understanding of game design: it has helped me think about how our different values for play create different kinds of aesthetic flaws in games, for instance.
What's the point of ethics? Our ideals for life are incredibly diverse, yet we must live together: I seek methods that permit this possibility, a project that takes its spirit from Kant’s “Realm of Ends” (which I term communal autonomy). Recently, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of our living in an ethical multiverse (a key theme in my book Chaos Ethics) since we all experience existence from within a unique system of metaphysics, what I sometimes call ‘a mythology’.
What are metaphysics? Untestable beliefs, foundations upon which different thoughts and ideas attain authority. Everyone has to believe something to get by in life, whether a notion of self, a cultural identity, an abstract (Science, God etc.) or some combination therein. By talking about metaphysics I hope to share some of the charms of our many different ways of looking at our shared world, and dissipate some of the prejudices.
Do you have a religious agenda? Absolutely! I want to find ways we can all live together, and that means dealing with religions, like the Hindu traditions, Buddhism, and Christianity, as well as non-religions, like positivism. Frankly, its impossible to explore metaphysics and ethics without intersecting with religion, which is not to suggest these traditions have a moral monopoly. Rather, the paths through morality begin and end in many places, and while many of them have come to us through traditional religious practices, that is far from the whole story.
What about science? The sciences are the means we acquire robust objective knowledge, but that kind of knowledge offers only a very narrow perspective on existence – we need much more than mere research if we are going to find good ways to live. I am unimpressed by the idea that the sciences are ‘at war’ with religion, or destined to replace it: as I explored in my book on the role of imagination in the evolutionary sciences, the relevant conflicts are better understood as disputes within the sciences and between religion and non-religion.
What does this have to do with you? Join in if you're interested! My philosophical thinking thus far – or my nonsense, as I oft term it – is right here at this site. Simply pick a topic from the sidebar (or a link in this post) that spurs your interest and join me for a while in contemplation of questions that I hope will, at the very least, provide an entertaining diversion.
Should I leave a comment? Please do! I love comments. But if you own your own blog consider taking part in the Republic of Bloggers instead, and send me a letter. I am committed to pursuing virtuous discourse, and I welcome discussions on any and all topics however they reach me, and whomever they are from.
Welcome to the Game!
This piece, written in April 2016, replaces an older version with the same title written in April 2010, before I had any of my philosophy books published. The links within this new foreword are intended to offer points of ingress into my nonsense for the intrepid explorer of ideas.