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The Creative Revolution That Is Changing the World Read chapter Read first chapter

2015 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Playing with Puzzling Philosophical Problems

Author : Stefano Gualeni

Published in: Creativity in the Digital Age

Publisher: Springer London

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Abstract

The academic context from which the following essay understands mediation (and from which it presents its claims) is commonly referred to as the ‘digital humanities’. By definition, the work of a digital humanist is interdisciplinary, interpretive, experiential and generative (Gold, Debates in the digital humanities. The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2012). Offering perspectives and ideas that contribute to the shaping of a ‘digital humanism’, the present work necessarily involves a degree of praxis and implicates ‘the creation of new technologies, methodologies, and information systems, as well as in their détournment, reinvention, repurposing […]’.

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previous chapter Creating Creative Technologists: Playing With(in) Education
next chapter The Creative Manipulation of Time Through Digital Personal Narratives
Footnotes
1
The quote corresponding to this footnote is an extract from the online ‘Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0’, available online at http://​www.​humanitiesblast.​com/​manifesto/​Manifesto_​V2.​pdf, page 6.
In particular, the ‘pracademic’ efforts discussed in PLAYING WITH PUZZLING PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS can be understood as a ‘direct engagement in design and development processes that give rise to richer, multidirectional models, genres, iterations of scholarly communication and practice’. (Ibid.)
 
2
In Martin Heidegger’s 1927Being and Time, the term ‘projectivity’ (Entworfenheit in the original German edition) indicates the way in which a person approaches the world in terms of his or her possibilities of being. Inspired by Heidegger’s writings in the field of philosophy of technology as well as by Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, the present study understands the concept of ‘projectivity’ as the innate openness of human beings to construct themselves and their world with the intercession of technical artefacts. Borrowing the words of Robert Musil, ‘projectivity’ is ‘a conscious utopianism that does not shrink from reality but sees it as a project, something yet to be invented’. (Musil 1996, 11) This position derives from a fundamental standpoint which understands technology as the materialization of the innate tendency of human beings for overcoming their physical, perceptual and communicative limitations.
 
3
The understanding of what a ‘world’ is proposed by this essay was inspired by Heidegger’s existential phenomenology. I understand a ‘world’ as an interrelated set of beings and relationships among beings that are stably perceivable and persistently intelligible within a certain spatial-temporal context. This interpretation permits to establish a clear distinction between the experiences of virtual worlds and the less stable and accessible ones of dreams and hallucinations. In line with this definition of what a ‘world’ is, I propose to understand simulations as mediators that grant an interactive access to worlds.
 
4
For a more in-depth reflection on the relationship between computer games and instrumental rationality, I recommend reading Paolo Pedercini’s blog post titled ‘Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism’, available online at http://​www.​molleindustria.​org/​blog/​videogames-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism
 
5
From this perspective, Marshall McLuhan’s gnomic observation according to which ‘the medium is the message’ (the interpretation according to which the message of any medium or technology is ‘the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces in human affairs’) appears to be particularly accurate (McLuhan 1994, 8).
 
6
I believe it is interesting to observe that, like most games and videogames that take a critical stance, Necessary Evil relies on controls, conventions and aesthetics that are already established in the tradition of a particular game genre, in this case the action role-playing videogame one. The deliberate design decision of not pursuing innovation and of relying on convention has the double advantage of:
1.
Not having to teach the players how to understand the world and operate in it, allowing them to access the critical message of the game in a more immediate and efficient way
 
2.
Making the subversive, critical aspects of the game more evident by contrast, that is to say, by making them stand out in their being unexpected and unfamiliar over the background of what can largely be considered as already known by the players
 
For a more thorough discussion focused on the ironic and self-critical dimensions of Necessary Evil, I recommend reading my gamasutra.com-featured blog post titled ‘Self-reflexive Video Games as Playable Critical Thought’, available online at:
 
7
The purpose of ‘augmented ontologies’ as a philosophical domain is that of understanding the effects of the experiences of virtual worlds on human thought and the potentialities for digitally mediated simulations to serve human beings in ‘overcoming’ the traditional (predigital) boundaries of human kinds of ontologies. According to the perspectives offered by ‘augmented ontologies’ and inspired by Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, the term ‘overcoming’ is not understood in the dialectical meaning of the German term Überwindung (surpassing) but must be embraced in the nuanced conjunction of two other terms: Andenken (rememoration) and Verwindung (distortion, twisting, incorporation), ‘a going-beyond that is both an acceptance (or ‘resignation’) and a ‘deepening” (Vattimo 1991, xxvi).
To be sure, what I am claiming here is that even when armed with digital hammers, our projectual efforts cannot ever aspire to break down the operational, intellectual and perceptive walls of our inescapable humanity. Technologies, however, traditionally assisted humanity in making such walls more and more flexible to a point that we could progressively bend them, deform them and increase our room for manoeuvre in thinking about reality and reflecting on ourselves. It is in this sense that virtual worlds are understood in my work as mediators that afford the augmentation of human kinds of ontologies.
 
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Metadata
Title
Playing with Puzzling Philosophical Problems
Author
Stefano Gualeni
Copyright Year
2015
Publisher
Springer London
Book
Creativity in the Digital Age

Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-6680-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4471-6681-8

Copyright Year: 2015

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6681-8_4