What is "The Forge?"

[Wayside]

I’m not sure what you’re claiming here. There are many interesting positions concerning ‘consciousness’ being advanced by contemporary analytical philosophers of mind. None of these positions have clearly emerged as the most plausible one – but at least they are presented in a clear, rigorous manner, and thus their claims can be critically evaluated and considered. Sadly, clarity and rigour are generally considered to be intellectual vices in ‘postmodernism’.

Oddly enough, I thought there was more a concensus about the unlikelihood of strong AI in analytic philosophy than anywhere else. So on that count I think eyebeams is misrepresenting your discipline as much as you're misrepresenting his with some of your comments. But maybe I've just been spending too much time with Searle, and everybody else thinks strong AI is in fact right around the corner.

But anyway, a few points: most analytic philosophy is both postmodern and poststructural. These aren't antithetical movements in the least. As you say, analytic philosophy is a method, not a set of ideas; postmodernism and poststructuralism, on the other hand, are precisely sets of ideas. Continental philosophy, to be sure, has a very different style than analytic, but to say it has a general lack of clarity or rigor is simply wrong. It's practically a different language, but one that makes perfect sense if you speak it. Now, other humanities people, like English and X Studies Ph.D.'s, who are wasting an enormous amount of paper right now regurgitating these ideas in the worst ways, certainly make it look bad; but if you're actually reading Gadamer or Foucault or Rorty you'll see the value in what they're doing. There's a reason analytic thinkers like Rorty and Donald Davidson have spent time making sure continentals like Gadamer get a fair shake in America. (Hell, once you get past the different discourses, Quine and Derrida, for example, are practically saying the same things. And if you know Searle's--and pretty much everyone else's--reply to Quine's indeterminacy thesis, it's the same damn counter Derrida got pwnz0rr3d with when he debated Gadamer. edit: eyebeams indirectly referred to this bit in his post as well.)

The hostility is misplaced, on both ends. Continental philosophers are already doing what analytic philosophers are doing and vice versa; each side just has different ways of going about their work. Postmodernism, at least, has the distinction of encouraging this diversity of method, and you see this encouragement as well in the best thinkers on both sides.

Can't we all just get along?

END of Tangent. Please resume the Forge-bashing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think that a lot of that way-out theory is making divisions where there are none, and the rest of it is purusing a dangerously detatched veiw of game-playing. All the while patting itself on the back for getting ideas that are obvious to any half-hearted game designer.

It's not useless. But it thinks it's *essential*. Which makes it hilariously absurd.

 

[Paka]

Well, thank God I was wrong about Forge member's propensity for Academic navel-gazing.

Yeah, this thread definitely captured what the Forge is about...

:\

 

[Akrasia]

This is the same slippery talk I hear from proponents of memetics and would-be poltical philosophers, as well: that it's just one position out of many and shouldn't be taken too serious. Then of course, they take it seriously enough to casually insult other positions and disciplines -- like you did. ...

'Slippery talk'? I'm sorry, but I don't see how this comment is related to the passage you quoted at all. I certainly did not mean to suggest that the various accounts of consciousness on the table right now should not be taken seriously -- anything but that.

... It's when you get into things like the utilitarian justification for the free market that you get some seriously faith-based loony stuff. ...

Um, okay.

... The fact of the matter is that postmodernism just isn't concerned with the same things as analytical philosophy. Analytical types like yourself falsely think that postmodernism criticizes the ideas of objective reality and assumes that attempting to understand it is futile...

Well, yes, to a great extent that has been my impression of 'postmodernism', at least from what I have read, a couple of unfortunate graduate seminars, and from far too many discusions with graduate students in other departments (especially 'literary studies' types). I would be relieved if this impression were in fact incorrect (though I would be at a loss at that point to figure out what precisely postmodernism was trying to claim, and why there exists such widespread confusion over its core claims).

...
I'd say that the core ideas of postmodernism -- that our thinking is deeply influenced by our subject positions and that communication is tenuous because of it -- is quite useful, fairly straightforward to justify and leads to a number of tools that we can use to recheck our assumptions....

And we needed 'postmodernism' for this insight? :\

Certainly, most of the analytic philosophy with which I'm familiar would not dispute that insight, at least when stated in those general terms. (The devil would be in the details, of course.)

...
I think your position on postmodernism is simplistic and erroneous. Your statement was based on making much broader assumptions about an entire discipline...

Postmodernism is a 'discipline'?

But perhaps my position is 'simplistic and erroneous'. It's based on a couple of graduate seminars and interactions with people who take that stuff seriously over a long period of time. However, it's thankfully not something that I work on, or think about much (at least over the past several years). And I'm sorry if my initial comment upset you.

...
Everybody says that about their departments and themselves. ...

Not really.

With respect to departments, many have definite areas of concentration and strength-- and they are well aware of this. (My department, in contrast, does not have any particular area of strength or focus.)

As for individual research, many people deliberately choose to focus on 'sexy' or 'fashionable' issues or topics for their PhD theses and articles for straightforward careerist reasons. I know some of these people. I also know from speaking with hiring committees from various departments in the past that I have been passed over for jobs because my work "wasn't sexy enough". But really, enough about me.

 

[Imret]

Well, I'm only seven pages in on my first reading of this thread, but I'd like to share something.

This is more or less my first exposure to The Forge, and while reading I was fascinated by jdrakeh's reference to the Narrativism definition. So I opened another Firefox tab and loaded up The Forge, then checked their Glossary page and read some of it aloud since the wife is a linguistics geek and I thought she'd be amused.

And it hung my computer. Within a half-dozen entries from their glossary, my computer actually choked on the BS.

Just wanted to toss in my first experience with The Forge.

 

[Akrasia]

... Continental philosophy, to be sure, has a very different style than analytic, but to say it has a general lack of clarity or rigor is simply wrong. It's practically a different language, but one that makes perfect sense if you speak it. Now, other humanities people, like English and X Studies Ph.D.'s, who are wasting an enormous amount of paper right now regurgitating these ideas in the worst ways,
...
The hostility is misplaced, on both ends. Continental philosophers are already doing what analytic philosophers are doing and vice versa; each side just has different ways of going about their work. Postmodernism, at least, has the distinction of encouraging this diversity of method, and you see this encouragement as well in the best thinkers on both sides.

Can't we all just get along?

I don't think that I disagree with your overall point here, though it is important to keep in mind that 'Continental philosophy' is much broader and varied than 'postmodernism'.

One of my colleagues works on Husserl and Heidegger (and Kant), but her method is distinctly 'analytical' in nature. Another friend works on Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. I greatly respect their work, and learn a lot from discussing philosophy with them.

In contrast, I've normally found myself deeply frustrated when trying to speak with cultural/political/literary theorists who identify themselves as 'postmodern' (or 'post-anything') in their approach.

Anyhow, I think I've encouraged this tangent quite enough now ...

 

[Imret]

I'm using quotation marks to set some concept of a thing off from its pure physical reality, in a rather obvious way, or at least I thought so. If you say gaming = G or N or S or some combination or subset of those things, when in fact my game = neither G nor N nor S etc., then my game != "gaming." I'm still choosing to call it gaming, but it's not "gaming," and it certainly isn't concerned with that concept (i.e. GNS) or about it in any way. This really seems like a trivial consquence of the disconnect between practices and theories to me. I'm going to keep doing what I do, and it really isn't about what some RPG theorist thinks gamers do in a broad sense. If you want specific examples, give me your theory, and I'll give you examples of where it fails to account for my practices. Without your theory, I can't give you those examples; all I can say is "do you have a theory that accounts for everything you do at the table?" If you answer no, you're already agreeing with that part of my argument.

What I'm saying is I don't have to, because you've already done it for me by expressing dissatisfaction with The Forge's theory. If that's "gaming," but that's not what you do, then what you do isn't "gaming." And if you take the small step of conceding that there's no all-purpose theory of gaming, then on a practical level there's no absolute concept of "gaming" for specific gaming practices to ever be about. Gaming will always be about the gaming that it is, but that doesn't mean it's about the gaming some theorist posits.

I'm with Teflon Billy.

Forgespeak = English with the non-Euclidean template.

 

[mythusmage]

The difference between the common man, a scientist, and an academic.

Question: Where does the sun rise in the morning?

Common man: In the East of course.

Scientist: In broad terms, in the East. But technically where the Sun rises in the morning depends on the time of year.

Academic: Before we can answer that question we first need to determine the meaning of the word, "where".

 

[LostSoul]

I think that a lot of that way-out theory is making divisions where there are none, and the rest of it is purusing a dangerously detatched veiw of game-playing. All the while patting itself on the back for getting ideas that are obvious to any half-hearted game designer.

It's not useless. But it thinks it's *essential*. Which makes it hilariously absurd.

You'd probably be happy that Ron closed the RPG Theory forums and told everyone to talk about theory in terms of Actual Play. Which is cool, because I enjoy reading those threads.

The way I see the theory stuff is that it's helpful to me. Especially to people who always wanted to make a game but never tried before. The fact that people are talking about it makes it obvious to this quarter-hearted game designer. (That's because I never would have considered all of this before in the depth that a community is able to, nor was I able to come up with ways to get the type of game experience I wanted without the group I grew up playing with.)

 

[SweeneyTodd]

This is a sad thread to read.. Lotta bitter-sounding people, slapping themselves on the back, crowing about how much some other website sucks.

The Forge, on the other hand, has threads about people enjoying themselves and discussing gaming.

Yep, you guys sure showed them.