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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6227814" data-attributes="member: 59082">This is an interesting point, because part of the problem with my 4e group is that despite playing for three years, we played on average once per months; sometimes it was twice a month, sometimes we missed two or three months. But the net result was that not all of the players mastered the rules, which slowed things down.So it may be that while the rules have something to do with how imagination is enabled, and immersion within the game world, it is more to what degree they are mastered. In the same sense that a jazz musician can only truly improvise - at least with skill and total freedom - when they have mastered the "rules" of their instrument (anyone, from novice to master, can improvise with a musical instrument, but not with the degree of "immersive freedom" that a Charlie Parker could).So do I! That's not what I'm meaning to stay. Constraints, or structure, don't stifle imagination, but "filler" does. A video game does, at least while you're playing it - because that's the nature of a video game; it is not meant to inspire you to generate your own images, but to "feed you" with pre-made ones. It is rarely either/or, however - but more of a spectrum. I am saying that the more "filler," the less one's imagination becomes dynamic and active. This isn't the same thing as constraints/guidelines, which are more like scaffolding.Here's another analogy that I think might better try to get across what I'm trying to say. Imagine renting an apartment. It has limitations and structure (constraints) by virtue of the shape of the rooms, the square footage, etc. Imagine that apartment as empty - you can do anything with it, decorate it in any number of ways - within the limitations of the physical space that it allows, of course. You might think about different themes - Japanese or kitsch or arts & crafts. Now imagine that same apartment pre-furnished. You can move things around a bit, and add a piece here and there, but its pretty much pre-determined. A further extreme would be sub-leasing an apartment that you can't change at all.I think 4e is sort of like a pre-furnished apartment. Now the thing is, the furniture is better quality than in messy eccentricity of 1e, but it is also more tightly filled, making it more difficult to move pieces around. It isn't a sub-leased apartment, so there is some freedom of movement, of re-arranging things.I agree. Actually, the interesting thing about abstract vs. representational art is that there's no correlation, as far as I can tell, with "imaginative richness." The degree of abstraction does not correlate with the degree of imaginative richness and has nothing to do with it.Does this invalidate my hypothesis? Only if we equate abstraction-representation with the spectrum I am referring to, which I'd prefer not to. It really might be something else, a kind of transparency that some representational art has and some doesn't (or to what degree it has it). Compare Todd Lockwood, a technically proficient artist, but one whose art is rather "opaque" - it is a kind of simulative realism Now look at someone like Stephen Fabian, who I think is much more imaginatively rich; his art, still representational, is more transparent, it evokes imagination and wonder. At least for me!Another angle is to look at a principle in the education system that I teach in, in which we use a phrase "from form to freedom." The idea is to start children with form and distinct guidelines and to gradually lead them towards freedom - to doing things themselves, from within themselves. Imagination, in its more receptive mode, is no more or less a part of the process anywhere along the way, but the degree to which it is self-generated should theoretically increase.This is where I believe [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] might be right, that we're talking about different cognitive styles. Some prefer more clear guidelines, some less. If you look at the KAI theory, you have two poles of adaption and innovation; one isn't better than the other, but they are very different. What you're talking about sounds more like the adaptive style, in which clear guidelines are preferred, and the individual prefers to master a pre-determined system; the innovative style prefers to think outside of the box, to create the rules themselves.Absolute value has some kind of "meta-assumption" or principle that veers into religion. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I'm merely saying that if there's absolute values to the universe, then they must be based on something; it seems illogical that they "just are."I agree, of course. The tricky part, though, is that some equate disagreement with intolerance or expressing a perspective with telling others how they should think, or what the One True Way is.Correlation does not equal causation. Saying, "this is how I think it is, whether you agree or not" is not the same thing as saying "how I think is how you should think, and I'm going to force you to do that." We are all, by and large, free to think the way we want to think - at least to the degree that we are free within our thinking, which most (all?) of us are not to varying degrees. When people cry fowl, "That's OneTrueWayism!" what they are really doing, in my view, is externalizing their own lack of freedom onto others, as if They Are Doing It To Me. The fallacy here is that anyone can actually force another to think as they think (of course they can and do - that's the game of advertising and politics - but not if one is conscious; subliminal messaging only works if you don't realize it is happening).So while I agree with your advocacy of a kind of absolute tolerance, part of that includes tolerance for disagreement - from both sides, not only the side who is expressing a meta-theory on human existence, but those who feel fenced in by meta-theories and resort to settling into the ultimate philosophical dead-end of absolute relativism. Or, as the bard said, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your [or my, or any] philosophy." And I mean any philosophy, including any I spout up, and also including the philosophy of absolute relativism that has been the guiding light on college campuses for a few decades now, and was one of a few founding forces in the politically correct movement of the late 80s and early 90s.I personally advocate an approach which one of my favorite philosophers, William Irwin Thompson, called "mind-jazz" or "knowledge-art" - which is based not on trying to find The One True Way, but a more expressionistic approach which arises out of the complex information age, or as Thompson describes it, "the play of knowledge in a world of serious data-processors."In a way this is a radical or dynamic relativism, but rather than making a pancake out of everything and saying "everything is subjective and relative," it not only brings context back into the mix, and allows for degrees of truthfulness based upon context, but also allows us to play within meta-theories and uber-cosmologies without falling into the old absolute despotism. To put it another way, if we realize that any castle we make is made out of sand, we can be more free to make castles, because we know they're impermanent and relative - but they also become more meaningful because of it, partially because they're not trying to account for all things at all times, but instead are microcosmic expressions of the macrocosm.</blockquote>

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