Games and the art of agency
Philosophical Review 128 (4):423-462 (2019)
Abstract
Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1215/00318108-7697863
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2019-05-01
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Citations of this work
Illusory attitudes and the playful stoic.Michael Ridge - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (9):2965-2990.
Musical agency and collaboration in the digital age.Tom Roberts & Joel Krueger - 2022 - In Kath Bicknell & John Sutton (eds.), Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill. New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 125-140.
References found in this work
Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - Oxford University Press.
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts.Kendall L. Walton - 1990 - Harvard University Press.