[Being a paper by me about games, work in progress that I've posted in instalments. The first instalment is here, the second here, and the third here - NG]
So far my argument has been that the three conditions laid down in Suits's definition as being necessary for some given activity to count as a game are not in fact necessary conditions. Are they, however, jointly sufficient in picking out what a game is? Some light may be thrown on this question by the following record of a conversation that has lately come into my possession.
L: Cheer up, GW. Why are you looking so depressed?
GW: Oh, hello there, Ludovic. I'm depressed because, as you know, I'm the Game Warden. It's my job to oversee the world's games and make sure there are enough of them. But I've just read this book by Bernard Suits. In it he puts forward a definition of games the effect of which is significantly to reduce the number of them. 'Tree and Girl' (as played many times by Norman Geras and his daughters) I have always seen as a form of game, but if Suits is right, I was mistaken. The same with 'Caractacus Potts', 'Cops and Robbers' and many other types of play.
L: Don't worry about it, GW. Even if Suits is right, which I doubt, it doesn't reduce the number of games being played.
GW: But how come, Ludie? It must do. The extent of the subtractions from the family of games that results from Suits's definition is considerable.
L: They are more than compensated for by the resulting additions, activities that no one would ever have thought of as games but for Suits's definition. Shall I give you an example?
GW: Yes, please do.
L: Well, there's this game that I play called 'Persuading My Wife'. Now and again, she and I will disagree about something: what we should do for the evening, whether our neighbour, Hilly, has a good heart, this and that. My wife has two qualities - extreme stubbornness and a general willingness to believe what I say – that, together, tempt me towards using trickery to get my view to prevail; you know, telling the odd fib, taking an imaginary phone call in which I 'receive' a piece of information vital to deciding the issue at hand, and so on. But I have made a rule for myself not to lie and cheat when trying to persuade her. I love my wife and I am an honest man; I also enjoy seeing if I can persuade her without any trickery. In addition, I make it a rule not to try and influence her away from her view by offering her incentives to change her mind - such as that I'll do her share of the housework for a day or two. Would you like another example, GW?
GW: Yes, please.
L: I know a young man who is extremely hard up. He's in his first job, not very well paid, and really struggles to make ends meet. His mother is a wealthy woman. She could easily help him out and has offered to do so - by paying some of his utility bills and writing him a cheque now and again late on in the month. But he refuses to let her help. He's a proud fellow and he wants to make his own way. And even though it's a struggle for him - I've seen him hungry more than once - he enjoys managing on his means. He plays this game called 'Getting By', one of the rules of which is to accept no financial aid from anyone, and therefore not from his mother.
GW: These are interesting cases, Luders, but are they really games on Suits's definition? In 'Persuading My Wife', you want to persuade her for extraneous reasons - so you can spend the evening in the way you prefer to, so as to convince her that Hilly is not to be trusted, or whatever - and you eschew dishonesty and the offering of incentives because you don't think these are honourable means. It doesn't seem to me that you have what Suits calls the lusory attitude. Your self-limiting rules are not ones you have adopted merely to make the activity of persuading your wife possible. Similarly, the young man of your acquaintance wants to manage financially without his mother's help from a sense of his own dignity. His rule that he can't accept assistance may well be a rule of life for him but surely it doesn't create the game 'Getting By', if it is Suits's meaning of the word 'game' we are following here.
L: You're overlooking an important feature of these two activities, GW. It is true that I would feel bad about tricking or bribing my wife; and so I do have independent reasons for not doing that. It is also true that my young friend wants to manage without his mom's help because of a bid for adult independence (that's how he sees it, anyway). But as I explained I also enjoy persuading my wife and I therefore have the constraining rules that I do in order to oblige me to succeed 'the hard way' even should I on occasion be tempted to resort to trickery. Likewise that young bloke... he likes the sense of achievement from managing to get by and so his no-financial-help rule keeps him to it. He, in playing 'Getting By', and I, in playing 'Persuading My Wife', accept rules that prohibit us from using more efficient means in favour of less efficient ones. Do you see what I mean?
GW: I think so, but while you were explaining it, something was bothering me and it led me to check on the precise terms of Suits's definition in my copy of The Grasshopper, which now accompanies me wherever I go. This speaks of 'using only means permitted by rules... where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means... and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity'. I emphasized 'just because' in the way that I read that. Couldn't Suits say, in response to your two examples, that they aren't examples of games under his definition, because the self-denying rules in the activities 'Persuading My Wife' and 'Getting By' are not accepted by you and your friend just because they make possible the persuading and getting-by activities which they govern? You and he, as you carefully explained to me, have additional reasons for respecting those rules: reasons of honour in your case, of independence, dignity, pride, in his.
L: No.
GW: I beg your pardon. Don't go getting all monosyllabic with me, Ludo. This is important. The size of the world's game population is at stake. What do you mean 'No'?
L: Sorry, Big G. It wasn't my intention to be short with you. I was catching my breath after a series of wordy explanations. But no, Suits could not say that. It is not a response that is available to him. For, in defending his view that professional games players are still indeed games players and playing games, he himself disallows an interpretation of 'just because' that would exclude the possibility of the player having extra reasons for accepting the rules, over and above the making-possible reason. If you'll just hand me your copy of the book, I'll find you the relevant passage. Thanks. Here it is:
'Where A is some action and R is a reason for performing A, you, Skepticus, interpret the phrase "A just because R" to mean: 1/ R is always a reason for doing A, and there can be no other reason for doing A. But I interpret the phrase "A just because R" to mean: 2/ R is always a reason for doing A, and there need be no other reason for doing A. Thus, a player's acceptance of rules because "such acceptance makes possible such activity" is the only reason he must have in playing a game, but it is not the only reason he may have.' (p. 131)
You see?
GW: Well, yes, I think I do see now. It's enough that the rules excluding more efficient means in favour of less efficient ones are accepted so that you can indulge in that particular exercise - here, persuasion without trickery, managing without financial help - but it's OK to have additional reasons for respecting those rules. Like Wayne Rooney, I suppose. He abides by the rules of football because he loves playing the game; but he's also not uninterested in the money he can earn by playing, so he accepts the rules for that reason as well, and what he plays doesn't cease to be a game because of this. Clear as pure water. I remain worried nonetheless.
L: But why?
GW: Because, my playful friend, 'Persuading My Wife' and 'Getting By' are a poor return for the loss of all those other games (children's games, make believe games, bags of them) demoted by Suits's definition. After all, how many people play 'Persuading My Wife' and 'Getting By'? Not very many, I'll wager - even if lots of people try to persuade their spouses, of whatever gender, and quite as many struggle to get by. But they don't make a game of it, like you and young Go-It-Alone.
L: Aha, but this is short-sighted of you, mighty Game Warden. What you have failed to detect in my explanations is that they apply far beyond the two examples I've given you, which were only examples. They apply much more widely, for the simple reason that activities covered by one sort of description are always amenable to other descriptions, and these other descriptions may reveal to you the lineaments of what Suits categorizes as a game.
GW: For instance?
L: Reading. Why do people read fiction? Give me a few reasons. Naturally, I don't expect a comprehensive list, just some of the typical reasons.
GW: We're talking about novels, right? Well, they read for pleasure; they read to get a sense of other lives than their own, other places, times, situations; they read to learn about, or maybe just to 'see', the subtleties of human motivation; some of them read because they want to expand their acquaintance with the world's literature. I'll stop there.
L: Yes, that's enough for present purposes. But here is another reason why, not everyone maybe, but many people read, or at least why they continue with a novel once they've started it, always assuming that nothing in the early part of the book has put them off: they read on because they want to find out what happens.
GW: That's true. But what of it?
L: Can't you see? They're playing the game 'Reading to the End of the Book to Find Out What Happens'.
GW: You've lost me.
L: Consider my own case. I read a fair bit but not nearly as much as my wife does. Nine out of ten of the novels I read she's already read; indeed I often read them on her say-so. The most efficient way of finding out what happens in most of the novels I read would be to ask Clarissa. Books she hasn't read I could look up on Wikipedia or in the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Fictional Plots. But I make it a rule not to. That rule makes it possible for me to find out what happens for myself - and that sure is a 'voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles'. I have to read pages and pages - sometimes over 400 of them! - where I could find out just like that, by asking Clarissa or looking it up.
GW: But, Loodles, you enjoy reading for other reasons.
L: Indeed I do. However, you won't have so quickly forgotten Bernard Suits's specification of his 'just because' condition, GW? The only reason I must have for eschewing the shortcut is that I've adopted the rule against doing so; but it is not the only reason I may have. 'Reading to the End of the Book to Find Out What Happens' is, consequently, a game on Suits's definition. You'll be familiar, I take it, with the concept of a 'spoiler'?
GW: Yes, I am.
L: It shows, I contend, that there are many players of this game, even if there are readers - I know one or two myself - who don't mind knowing in advance how things are going to pan out.
GW: But this is wonderful news. It means that, with Suits's definition, the population of games-playing episodes will be massively enlarged.
L: It's even better than you think, GW. It's not only reading. A lot of people have pretty much the same attitude to the movies they watch - they don't want to be told the denouement in advance. So there's the game 'Watching to the End of the Movie to Find Out What Happens'. And there's also 'Watching to the End of the TV Series to Find Out What Happens'.
GW: It's a game-playing explosion, Ludester!
L: You bet it is. Shall I tell you about the game, 'Getting the Labour Candidate Re-Elected in a Totally Safe Seat'?
GW: No, it's OK. I need to be getting back to work soon.
L: How about 'Composing a Letter to His Mother'? Or (one I came across just the other day) 'Trying to Ensure That Sensible Decisions Are Taken at the Faculty Meeting'?
GW: I feel I've thoroughly absorbed the point now... Oh... Oh... [The Game Warden pauses. He appears to be assailed by an unwelcome thought. From a single line on his brow a troubled expression spreads downwards across his face.] But hold on. What this all means, in fact, is that Suits's definition is busted. There's no explosion of episodes of game-playing after all.
L: I'm afraid not. Busted is right. Not only does his definition beg the question by being unable to account for a whole class of what we standardly regard as games, it also lets in, as being games, activities which not even Bernard Suits himself seems to have noticed for that status. If family resemblances give you imprecise boundaries in this matter, the 'voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles' allows you to find games more or less at will. Still, as I began this conversation by saying: cheer up, GW. You're no worse off than you were before. You're left with roughly the population of games you previously thought you had. By the way, I have a spare copy of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. I'd be happy for you to have it.
To follow this long exchange, I make one other observation in concluding. Even if Bernard Suits's case had been compelling, as I have tried to demonstrate that it is not, he wouldn't have shown Wittgenstein to be comprehensively wrong. He would have shown only that Wittgenstein was wrong about the meaning of the word 'game', without thereby establishing that he was wrong about family resemblance concepts in general.
What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of something's being a table? Or of an act's being evil? There may be answers to these two questions, though if there are I would like to know what they are. But even if there are, I think that a certain sensitive area of Wittgenstein's anatomy remains secure against Bernard Suits's footwear so long as the family resemblance idea can usefully account for a significant range of human meanings.