Only a Game

Coming Up

A week from today, Act II of the Philosophy of Science 'campaign' will resume... I've realised at this point that the name of this particular adventure is The Magical Science Campaign, since its theme is precisely the disparity between people's feelings about the sciences and the actual practices of scientists. I started out thinking this was a mini-campaign, but it's clear at this point that it is a fully-fledged epic like the Metaphysics Campaign and the Ethics Campaign before it.

In this second Act, we will begin by exploring the greatest philosophical resistance movement of our time, the Four Oxford Moral Philosophers, then we'll venture forth to explore relationships between the sciences and other aspects of the human experience - specifically religion, journalism, and ultimately, death. From providing a framework of the problem (the state of pseudoscience, and the way magical science can trigger that collapse of scientific practice), these pieces confront some of the symptoms of the current epistemic crisis and perhaps also illuminate some of its causes too.

The Game resumes in earnest next Tuesday.

Intermission and Ice Cream

Are you old enough to remember when movies stopped after the first few reels and a person came down the aisles to sell ice cream...? I think this was all over by the end of the 1980s. The last movie I recall with an intermission was David Lynch's sumptuous adaptation of Dune, which he apparently hated - a view shared, I think, by most of the audience at the screening I was at in 1984! I am a fan of intermission as a concept, and grateful that it survives in the theatre if not in the movie theatre.

And in the spirit of Intermission, please take this opportunity to get your own metaphorical ice creams, as I'm not ready to resume my musings on our tortured relationship with the sciences just yet. The new pieces for the Philosophy of Science mini-campaign are coming along quite robustly, but they're fighting among themselves as some things want to come out that I hadn't originally intended and I'm having to give them space to breath. As a result, I don't think I'll be running the second act until April.

In the meantime, I shall leave you with an intermezzo piece on personal identity that actually connects to a forthcoming Philosophy of Science piece but stands better on its own. It turned out to be about Freddie Mercury. But it was always also about me. And I suspect it's also about a few other people as well... maybe everyone. We'll see. It's called 'Coming Out'. You can read it tomorrow.

Please return to your seats before the next reel commences.

Slowly Awakening

Greetings and salutations!

I am still gearing up for blogging and such, and not yet on top of anything (least of all Twitter, which I've not touched since early November). I have some philosophy of science pieces ready to run, but I need to get my head into my work a little more before I can start kicking things off here at the Game.

I confess, it was not my intention to go back to philosophy of science - The Mythology of Evolution was the one project I had intended in that space, and that was motivated by political diplomacy. I see now that the tension between the sciences and politics alluded to by Bruno Latour is far more problematic than I had previously imagined, and that if there's any hope of rescuing the Kantian project of living together, it is not only in the evolutionary sciences that we shall have to be careful not to mistake fantasies for facts.

So we'll have something of a mini-campaign on philosophy of science in the back-end of the Winter, and depending how long it takes to wrangle the drafts I'll be moving into political philosophy with Rethinking Intellectual Property in the Spring. Watch this space!

New rambling nonsense soon...

Limited Service

My Autumnal Social Media break has been such a relief that I don't quite want to come back... but still, I must write, so I cannot hide forever! I am making good progress on the Rethinking Intellectual Property serial, but it is frequently becoming complicated as I work through the specific issues, so I can't quite see this reaching a climax any earlier than Spring 2021. In the meantime, I have some philosophy of science pieces for January, since it seems that we are desperately in need of debugging our hopelessly broken relationships with our research communities, and I obviously can't simply keep my mouth shut when there are philosophical confusions abroad that are bringing about dire unintended consequences.

However, as the title says, it's only a 'limited service' this December. I shall be available on the blogs for the next two weeks - and I already have two blog-letters to reply to, which should keep me very busy during that time! I will also be replying to any comments on the blogs (as usual) but I shall not be having any significant engagement with Twitter or anything of the kind until January 2021 at the earliest. I will probably turn on the robot for ihobo, though, and Typepad will echo blog posts and comments onto Twitter too, so if you see activity there it will be a robot rather than me personally. Please accept my apologies for not replying on Twitter while I am elsewhere.

Anyway, I'm still here, and you can still reach me for virtuous discourse. It's just that other kind of 'communication' I'm not ready to attempt yet...

More soon!

Please Wait...Shuffling the Deck

Just a short post to say that new material is coming, but I have some fraught weeks working on the page proofs for the second edition of  Game Writing and wrangling tasks for clients. I am still puttering around with blog material in the gaps of my time - there are just fewer gaps! First out of the gate is looking likely to be an ihobo serial called Game Dissonance, but a philosophical interrupt here is always a possibility too, assuming I can get my head out of the nonsense (there's a lot around at the moment). Should be posting before the end of the month, chaos willing.

Also worth saying that with #100Cyborgs completed I am open for blog-letters of all kinds, to which I always reply, one way or another! (Of course, I was never closed for these, but I am specifically inviting them over the next year.) Never written a blog-letter? It's a great time to start! No blog of your own? It's never too late to start one!

To everyone who has supported my blogging over the years, my infinite and unlimited gratitude, love and support.

Fifteen Years Today!

Hard to believe it was fifteen years ago this day that I first began typing my extraneous thoughts into blog posts. It's been quite a journey! In the time since I began, I've published a great many philosophy books that began as posts here on Only a Game. Alas, I have also watched discussion on the blog fall from its peak as a lively forum for exchange of ideas to the current wasteland of comments where a month where I get more than one short comment is exceptional.

So I frequently ask myself: why continue?

The answer is that I have to write, and it feels right that I should share those writings publicly, where at least the possibility exists for discussion. I do long for more discourse and less narrowcast, but it is clear that the golden age of blogging is over, and while I am still a member of the Republic of Bloggers, the exchange of blog-letters is a rare event - although always cherished. My especial love and gratitude to Chris Billows and Jed Pressgrove for their exchanges with me, which have been of inestimable value.

Sometimes it is suggested that I move to Medium. I am wary. I cannot move my blog to a place that is not my own, and the prevailing quality of all social media is that the content is at the mercy of the mob. I have not ruled it out, but the weight of fifteen years of practice keeps me to doing it the way I always have. And I am sceptical that changing platform will resolve the problem with discourse, since the problems with discourse is the core the problem of the early twenty first century.

So, what now?

Firstly, I must complete the epic two year project that is A Hundred Cyborgs, which is now just ten cyborgs away from concluding. (I know what most of the final ten will be, but I've no idea what #100 will be!) After that, I intend to go back to freeform blogging for a while, as I have throughout June. I've been enjoying it. It would be nice to be read as well as to write, but to write is still enough for me. I might have a go at rethinking intellectual property law in the spirit of Kant's rethinking of law in the context of morality. I'm also always up for suggested topics, since when someone suggests a topic it means I am about to engage in discourse. And this is the point of the exercise.

Well there be another fifteen years of Only a Game? Let's find out.

A Hundred Cyborgs begins again, for the final time, next week.

A Wild Blogger Appears!

My social media break is officially over, but as usual I'm reluctant to rush back into the chaos of the hive mind, and taking my sweet time at reconnecting to it all. I've caught up on comments (a whole one of those...), but I have yet to uncork Twitter.

Maybe next week.

Have enough #100Cyborgs pieces to see out the year, but I am hoping to get in a couple of blog letters this December that I still need to find the time to write. Also, I have to start thinking about what happens when A Hundred Cyborgs ends, which is going to happen sometime next year. Chronologically, it's the longest blog campaign I've run (although it might not have as big a word count as The Ethics Campaign)... it's going to be strange when its over!

The Game resumes shortly!

Brevis Absentia

Next week I'm at Gamescom speed dating publishers again, and then I'm on vacation. A Hundred Cyborgs is on hiatus now until Autumn, but will return later this year with more ponderings about the strange creatures we become with our technology. And coming up for September, the Designer's Notes for Silk, which is much more philosophical and political than anything of its kind anyone has ever written, myself included (which is why I'm running it here and not on ihobo.com). Stay tuned!

The Game resumes shortly.

Awakening from Slumber

Returned from my blissfully disconnected Autumn social media break, but hopelessly behind on everything. I shall catch up on comments here as soon as I can, and we will return to A Hundred Cyborgs  from Tuesday next week.

Standby for further nonsense!

Autumnal Intermission

Taking my usual break from social media for a few weeks this November. I will be hiding from the socially mediated world from Sunday November 11th until Monday 26th November at the earliest. A Hundred Cyborgs will continue soon afterwards.

Back soon!