Miguel Sicart, author of Playing Software, joins me for a playful, even anarchist discussion which was supposed to be about the work of Maria Lugones but ended up being about Lugones, Graeber, Almodóvar, Maradona, and much more.

You can find Miguel's work here: https://miguelsicart.net/

Thi Nguyen joins me to discuss The Grasshopper, a work which takes up Wittgenstein's challenge to define a game and does so in a very productive way. Thi and I discuss the Suitsian definition of a game, how it can redefine not just our sense of games but also the meaning of life, and what this definition of games means for our understanding of agency.

We conclude by discussing María Lugones' theory of play, which will be the subject of my next episode with Miguel Sicart.

You can find more from Thi here: https://objectionable.net/

Why do you feel anxious, according to Schopenhauer?

Excess energy!

What should you do about it?

Play a game!

Philosopher of games C. Thi Nguyen joins me to discuss his current work on the intersection of anarchism and games studies. The conversation was so much fun that I started this podcast to continue exploring this topic.

For more from Thi, here's his website: https://objectionable.net/

Jonne Arjoranta the of Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies joins me to talk about games and definitions in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. You can find Jonne's articles on the topics below:

"Game Definitions - A Wittgensteinian Approach"

https://gamestudies.org/1401/articles/arjoranta

"How to Define Games and Why We Need to" - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40869-019-00080-6

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