Plumbing Game Studies

How would you feel if you had to live life over and over again? Would it be like playing Slay the Spire? Or maybe Super Mario Bros?

This episode of How to Do Things with Games begins with Mary Midgley’s 1974 question: “Why do philosophers talk about games so much?” Well, why do they (she continues)? I’m not sure, but I’m sure there’s work that needs to be done on the philosophy of games, philosophical infrastructure that can, like plumbing, help ideas flow.

I also discuss the difference between analytic and continental philosophy, the way that philosophy itself is a game, and whether or not Ludwig Wittgenstein helps or hurts us to create some philosophical plumbing:

References:

•  “The Game Game” by Mary Midgley - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3750115 
• “Philosophical Plumbing” by Mary Midgley - https://philpapers.org/archive/MIDPP.pdf 
• “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” by Richard Rorty - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901738 
• Games: Agency as Art by Thi Ngyuen - https://objectionable.net/games-agency-as-art/ 
• “The Final Foucault” by Michel Foucault - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019145378701200202 
• Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations