UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Strategy
"Games and the Good"
Hurka
Stephen E. Schmid
!1
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
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Hurka argues that game-playing is an intrinsic good!
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Hurka says he will "defend the value only of playing good
games" (p. 23)
He thinks game-playing as an intrinsic good is a "modern view
value"!
Stephen E. Schmid
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Suits's Definition of Games and Game Terminology
Definition of Game (1-4)
& Sport (1-5)
1. Goal–directed activity
2. Rules limit the permissible means of goal
attainment
3. Rules prohibit more efficient in favor of
less efficient means"
4. Rules are accepted to make the activity
possible!
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Value and Difficulty
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Terminology
Prelusory Goal
Hurka thinks playing "good games" has value!
What are "good games"?!
Good games are challenging activities!
Lusory Goal
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Lusory Attitude
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So, difficult activities are intrinsically good
The rules of the game, according to Suits, are supposed to
make achieving the goal more difficult!
5. And, require the demonstration of physical skill and prowess
Stephen E. Schmid
!3
Stephen E. Schmid
!4
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Defending Difficult Games as Intrinsic Goods
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1. Achievements Are Valued Relative !
to the Difficulties Overcome
Two defenses!
A. Achievements are valued relative to the difficulties overcome!
B. "Rational connection to reality" (Nozick's Experience
Machine)!
1. Theoretical connection to reality-having beliefs about
the world that are both true and justified!
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In this first defense, Hurka is simply asserting that many people
include in their list of intrinsic goods achievement!
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Since not all achievements are of equal value, Hurka claims that
those achievements that are more difficult to achieve are more
valuable than those that are easier to to achieve
2. Practical connection to reality-the ability to achieve a
goal given justified true beliefs about the world
Stephen E. Schmid
!5
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Stephen E. Schmid
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
2. "Rational Connection to Reality"
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Theoretical Connection to Reality
Nozick's Experience Machine!
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Imagine a machine that could give one pleasure for any
activity that person wanted to participate in!
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The experience machine is a counterexample to hedonism!
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If life in the experience machine is not ideal, it is because
people are separated from reality and the challenges life
brings!
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Would you want to spend you life in the Experience
Machine? If you did, what would you be missing?!
A theoretical connection to reality is simply about how one goes
about justifying one's beliefs about the external world!
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Having the ability to broadly justify a wide range of beliefs
about the world is more valuable than knowledge focused on a
few particulars!
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Hurka’s main point is that knowledge of broad and robust
principles will allow one to know more about the world than a
narrow justificatory scheme.
Hence, having a "rational connection to reality" is considered a
good
Stephen E. Schmid
!7
Stephen E. Schmid
!8
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
UW-Rock County
Practical Connection to Reality
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Aspects of Difficulty Found in Good Games
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A practical connection to reality is the ability to act and achieve a
goal given one's knowledge about the external world!
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Beliefs and actions which enable a broad range of activities
are more valuable than a small range of skills and abilities!
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"Just as more complex explanatory relations make for more
value in knowledge, so more complex means-end relations
make for more value in achievement." (p. 25)
Stephen E. Schmid
See: "This model deepens the value of achievement…." (p. 25)!
Intellectual forms of difficulty: Hurka thinks that games like golf,
hockey, chess, and basketball require one to maintain in one's
mind complex and extended content.!
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Analogous to broad principles justify beliefs about the
world!
Philosophy of Sport
The intellectual challenge constitutes one of the main
difficulties of that sport!
Physical forms of difficulty: games like boxing and weightlifting
require physical forms of difficulty, but "do not instantiate the
value of rational connection"!
•
!9
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Since these types of games "do not instantiate the value of
rational connection," Hurka is not sure what role they play in
the good of game playing
Stephen E. Schmid
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Explaining the Good of Loving a Sport
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The End-state Versus the Process
"...if difficulty is as such good, the prelusory goal and rules give it
a good-making feature and the lusory attitude chooses it because
of that good-making feature. This connects the lusory attitude to
an attractive view that is been held by many philosophers, namely
that if something is intrinsically good, the positive attitude of
loving it for the property that makes it good, that is, desiring,
pursuing and taking pleasure in it for that property, is also, and
separately, intrinsically good." (p. 27)
Stephen E. Schmid
!10
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Hurka thinks that what makes game playing an intrinsic good is
the attitude of the player!
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The goals of games are trivial and have little to no value in and of
themselves!
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(e. g., putting a little white ball into a little hole using a long
stick is a pretty trivial thing)!
What is not trivial is the attitude of the player to participate in an
activity which demands overcoming obstacles in order to achieve
a goal. Since achieving a goal is an intrinsic good, then it is the
process of achieving that goal that is good.
Stephen E. Schmid
!12
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
UW-Rock County
Modern Value
Philosophy of Sport
The Argument
1. Achievement is an intrinsic good.!
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2. Some achievements are more valuable than others.!
Hurka is arguing, contrary to Aristotle, that the good of gameplaying arises from the processes involved in achieving a goal!
3. Achieving a goal by overcoming obstacles is more valuable than
achieving a goal with no obstacles.!
Aristotle thought that the end-state of some action was more
valuable than the means to that end state!
4. What makes some achievements more valuable than others depends
upon the complexity and robustness of the difficulties overcome.!
5. Games are activities where the goals are made more difficult to
achieve because of the rules.!
"But it is characteristic of what I am calling modern values to
deny this assumption [that the products of action are more
valuable than the process], and to hold that there are activities
that necessarily aim at an external goal but whose value is
internal to them in the sense that it depends entirely on features of
the process of achieving that goal." (p. 29)
6. So, games have a good-making property.!
7. Playing games requires one to accept the rules of the game.!
8. So, playing a game for its own sake means one is fixing on the
game's good-making property.!
9. So, the motive to participate in a game simply for the challenge of
achieving a difficult goal is intrinsically good.
Stephen E. Schmid
!13
UW-Rock County
Philosophy of Sport
Problems and Questions
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Why assume that “achievement” is an intrinsic good?!
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Why are some games (rock, paper, scissors) not very good games? !
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Why is “challenge” essential to the “goodness” of a game?!
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Why is complexity important to valuing games? Might too much
complexity be destructive? Might simple games be valuable? !
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Is the 100-meter sprint valuable?!
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Are more complex games necessarily more valuable?!
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Do judged events have value? The “achievement” seems external to the
activity in judged events since “achievement” is judged.!
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What is the role of agent motivation in determining the value of gameplaying?
Stephen E. Schmid
!15
Stephen E. Schmid
!14