An Epistemic Condition for Playing a Game

ABSTRACT

In 'The Grasshopper' Suits proposes that ‘playing a game’ can be captured as an attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs (prelusory goal), using only means permitted by rules (lusory means). These rules prohibit more efficient means, and are accepted because they make the activity possible (lusory attitude). I argue these conditions are not jointly sufficient. The starting point for the argument is the idea that goals, means and attitudes can pick out their content in different ways. They can involve a direct reference (‘crossing this specific finish line’), or a description that picks out something (‘crossing a line on the track after running 100 m’). I provide cases in which one’s attitudes, accepted goals or accepted means pick out their content by a description such that the person does not play a game, even if Suits’s conditions are satisfied. I show that this demands an epistemic condition for playing a game that also applies to commitment based accounts. Finally, I discuss what such an epistemic condition could be. I argue that the condition does not require personal knowledge of all goals and means, but merely enough epistemic access that the goal and permissible means can guide one’s behavior safely enough. This might be satisfied by social extensions, such as access to tools (e.g. a rulebook) or other people (e.g. referees).

KEYWORDS:

• Games
• playing a game
• bernard suits
• virtue epistemology
• extended belief

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Michael Ridge for a discussion of these ideas at a very early stage and for giving me access to his forthcoming work. Further thanks to two reviewers for this journal for helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A reviewer raises the question whether we should rather read Suits as saying (2*): S is intentionally using only means permitted by the rules. Suits’s definition cited above does not involve this clause. Nevertheless, it is worth thinking about versions of (2*) using different conceptions of the term ‘intentionally.’ For some there will be barely any difference to (2). For instance, if acting intentionally merely means executing a prior intention to ϕ then the content of this prior intention (a mental state) will be to follow the respective rules in whatever form they are present to S. In this case, the arguments in this paper will work as they are. However, there is a competing reading of (2*) available that makes an important difference that leads ultimately to a comparable end result to the one I aim for. Anscombe (1957) claims that doing something intentionally involves knowing what you are doing by the description under which you intended to do it. If we follow this idea, we can use the conditions for intentional action against counterexamples. In fact, I believe that my arguments for an epistemic condition of playing a game in this paper could also be made and answered this way. If we understand (2*) with Anscombe, we can investigate a knowledge condition required for intentionally using only means permitted. We will thereby also end up with my epistemic conditions for playing a game—but in this case they would be implicit in the modified condition (2*). This seems to me an interesting and worthwhile project, but is not the one I engage with here. It would require a proper discussion of intentionality and a defense of Anscombe’s idea, for which I do not have the space.

2. This is roughly the difference between reference (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn) in Frege (1892).

3. A similar case might be one of a young child mimicking older children’s playing behavior. A possible interpretation of this mimicry is that the young child accepts whatever goal and rules the older children accept, but lacks explicit knowledge of goals and rules. Even if their behavior fits, we would be reluctant to say that they play the game in a literal sense. It would be more naturally classified as mimicking, or pretending to play.

4. This is not to say that every performance requires know-how. Bengson and Moffett (2007) provide an example of Irina who supposedly can perform a salchow [a figure skating jump] without knowing how. I have no settled opinion on whether they are correct. My claim is limited to playing a game, in which case know-how appears to be necessary.

5. Cf. Gettier (1963).

6. The case is originally by Chisholm (1977, 105).

7. For a general discussion of different kinds of luck and knowledge, see Pritchard (2005).

8. This is a different kind of luck than the veritic luck present in Gettier cases.

9. Kreider (2011) hints at this by mentioning that one has to act ‘from the rules and not merely in accordance with them’ (Kreider 2011, 59). However, he does not further elaborate on this observation. He also does not acknowledge that one can have a relevant lusory attitude while still not satisfying this condition.

10. See www.2f-spiele.de (accessed 14/4/2018).

11. A similar point could be made with so-called legacy games, e.g. Risk Legacy by Rob Daviau and Chris Dupuis.

12. The notion of extended representation here is similar to the one used in the idea of an extended mind. In Clark and Chalmers’s (1998) we also find the Alzheimer’s disease patient Otto being guided by the contents of his notebook as an important factor for ascribing extended beliefs.

13. See also footnote 1.