SAE Exercises and Games of Judgment · I: The Solo Game
SAE 判断力练习与游戏·一：一个人的局
Someone sets up an endgame, does a jigsaw puzzle, builds with blocks: on the other side no one makes a move, and no one referees. This paper asks: where, then, does judgment fall? The answer is that the rules settle only how one may move, not where this move goes; and the material, too, has responses of its own. When a person sees that "here one can still move like this", that seeing is what this series calls that judgment; how his hand then moves is another matter. The layer this kind of game newly opens is 13DD: this move is mine. At 13DD that judgment is mine, and so is a misreading; "I misread that just now" can only be said by oneself. The same game can be played again; judgment is put to use time after time, owned by the player himself.
Pretend play by oneself is also a solo game: the stick is a stick and also a horse, and the player holds both readings. If a solo game sets up a yardstick one can lose to, such as a score, a time limit or one's previous result, the subject can stand at 14DD; one's previous self is a yardstick, not another subject.
The contrast is with Suits: the same rule that he sees as a deliberately set obstacle, this paper sees as a construct, looking at what it leaves unsaid; the two look at two sides of the rule. Finally, two difficulties are taken up: games designed so that one cannot stop; and how a person's sinking into the game and forgetting himself coexists with "this judgment is mine".
Keywords: Self-as-an-End, SAE, play, judgment, the solo game, 13DD, reflexive negation, remainder, pretend play, yardstick, Suits, Gadamer, exit
Writing statement: This paper was co-drafted with Claude (Anthropic). All intellectual decisions, framework design and final editorial judgments were made by the author.
0. Introduction
Someone sets up an endgame from a chess book. He knows all the rules, and the positions of the pieces are printed in the book; which move to make, the book does not say. He looks for a while and sees that the rook can still get round by the side. He plays two moves, finds that the opponent's knight will block it, puts the pieces back where they were, and says: "No, I misread that just now."
In this scene there is no opponent, and no one tells him he was wrong. Yet something did happen: first he saw a way, and later he himself negated it. That is what this paper is about. Seeing that "here one can still move like this" is judgment; moving the rook over is action; "I misread that just now" is his retracting his own judgment. The three happen in one connected sequence, but they are not one and the same thing.
The Overview says that a game takes its rules as its construct, and that the rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do (Overview, Section 2). The solo game is this sentence in its simplest form: on the other side there are only the rules and the material.
1. The Move the Rules Leave Unsaid
In the solo game, with only rules and material on the other side, the remainder can show itself in two places.
One is the move the rules do not settle. The rules of chess lay down how each piece may move, but not which move to make in this game; a jigsaw puzzle fixes a single place for each piece, but not which piece to fit first. The other is the response of the material. At which level a stack of blocks will topple, whether this piece fits once it goes in: one finds out only by trying.
Someone may ask: does one person playing alone count as a game? It does. A game needs a subject, and the one playing is that subject; to call it play, one must also look at whether it is voluntary, and in the solo game this condition concerns only the player himself: he entered the game himself, and he can leave it (Overview 6.1, conditions 2 and 4).
2. "Here One Can Still Move Like This"
2.1 Judgment, Prediction and Action
Judgment, as this series uses the term, is seeing that "this game still has such a remainder" (Overview 2.3). In the endgame it is "here one can still move like this"; with the blocks it is "this block can still be placed like this".
This judgment must be kept apart from two things. One is action: making this move, placing this block, is something done around that judgment; it may be done, or it may not. The other is prediction: foreseeing that the opponent's knight will block is calculating what will happen next, a capacity that comes very early: it is already there at 12DD (Laughter I). Prediction is material that judgment uses; it is not itself that judgment. What that judgment sees is a point the construct has not fully taken in; and, further, it has an owner.
2.2 This Judgment Is Mine
At 13DD negation is for the first time taken as one's own, and so can also turn round and negate one's own earlier negation (Laughter II, 1.1). In the solo game this shows most clearly: there is no opponent to point out his mistake for him, and no partner to catch it for him; "I misread that just now" can only be said by himself.
In Laughter II's words, "Retraction is the business of reflexive negation" (4.2). What is retracted is the validity of that judgment; moving the piece back, or taking the blocks down and building again, is an action that follows the retraction. The two often happen together, but they can come apart: a person may already have retracted that judgment and not bother to put the piece back; or he may take the blocks down merely because he is tired of building, without having retracted anything.
Being able to retract is not the same as always retracting (Laughter II, 4.2); and having retracted does not mean that the judgment was wrong in the first place: after thinking for a while he may move the rook back out to the side and find that the original judgment was right, and that what was wrong was the retraction just now. Laughter II says that what reflexivity provides is the possibility of correction, not a guarantee for the laughter; here the point is taken one step further: retraction itself is also only the possibility of correction, not a guarantee of correction.
2.3 Back to the Endgame
Now, following the procedure of Overview 5.4, let us go through the opening scene item by item.
The rules and the position printed in the book are this game's construct. The rules do not say where this move goes; the path of the rook getting round by the side is something the rules have not fully taken in, and it lies right before his eyes: this is the remainder. His seeing that "here one can still move like this" is that judgment. His then foreseeing that the opponent's knight will block is a prediction about the next few moves: material. Moving the rook over and then back is the action of his hand. "I misread that just now" is his retracting the validity of the judgment "here one can still move like this", not merely taking back a move; this retraction itself may also be wrong (2.2).
That judgment is his, and that retraction is his too. Judgment was put to use in this game, owned by him (Overview 5.3). This does not show that he will see more accurately next time, nor that from now on he knows how to play chess.
2.4 Playing Again
The solo game is the easiest to play again: the pieces go back to where they were, the blocks are knocked down and built up again. The same game can be played again, and each time judgment can differ (Overview, Section 5). The remainder seen this time can differ from the one seen last time; where the difference lies and whether it can be kept is another question, which this paper does not discuss. Playing again does not erase the last time either: last time's judgment has already happened.
3. Pretend Play: This Is a Stick, and Also a Horse
A child rides a stick all round the yard and says it is his horse. The child meant here is already at 13DD; what holds for younger children this paper does not discuss (Overview, Section 8).
The stick is a stick and also a horse; both readings hold. This has the same form as what the Laughter Overview, 2.2 says of the pun: "still valid". The player holds both readings: he does not, because it is a horse, worry that it has no stable for the night; nor, because it is a stick, does he stop shouting "giddy-up". He also knows that he is playing. Here one can compare Bateson, who takes "This is play" to be a metacommunicative message (Bateson 1955). This is only a pointer; the argument does not rest on it.
Pretend play has almost no explicit rules; what, then, makes it count as a game? The constraints it keeps to. The constraint of this game is "this stick is taken up as a horse": getting on it, shouting "giddy-up", tying it up by the tree, all go as for a horse; when he throws the stick back on the woodpile and says "I'm not playing any more", this game is over (Overview 6.1, condition 1).
The construct of pretend play is the reading "this is a horse", together with the lie of the land in the yard. The remainder lies in how else this horse can still run and where else it can still go. The child's seeing that "it can still jump that ditch" is that judgment; running over and jumping is the action.
4. The Yardstick: Opening 14DD in the Solo Game
4.1 Something One Can Lose To
If a solo game sets up a yardstick one can lose to, the subject can stand at 14DD. The yardstick can be a score, a time limit, a record, or one's previous self.
Clearing a level, finishing a puzzle, solving a problem: these are not yardsticks. When the jigsaw is finished, the game is over; that is not something one can lose to. A yardstick must really have entered the rules actually adopted for this game: if ten minutes has been set as this game's success condition, it is a yardstick; if it is only a wish, it is not. Whether it has entered, one tells from checkable material, such as a timer having been set or a success condition announced. The example of the timed jigsaw is gone through once in Overview 7.7.
Setting up a yardstick only opens 14DD; it does not guarantee that he is already there. Whether his wanting to be quicker at this moment is a passing intention or a purpose lying on the line of "what I should become" depends on what he actually holds; whether he looks at the clock cannot on its own fix the layer (Overview 7.7). How the purpose of 14DD enters is set out in detail in Paper II. Here it is only pointed out that having established the possibility of losing is common to the solo game with a yardstick and the competitive game; another subject standing on the other side is what the competitive game adds (Overview 7.4).
4.2 One's Previous Self
Someone goes for a run and wants to beat his previous time. On the other side there is nothing sought by another person, only the result the previous run left behind. So one's previous self is a yardstick, not another subject, and this game is still a solo game.
Relation Theory Paper 2 says that a position in time is not another subject (H14); this paper agrees with it. Laughter IV says that the other of the laughter of despair is the future self; that is an extended reading within that series. How the two are to be read together is left to Section 9.
5. Contrast with Suits
5.1 Suits's Definition
In The Grasshopper, Bernard Suits gives a long definition of games: to play a game is to attempt to bring about a specific state of affairs using only the means the rules permit; the rules prohibit more efficient means and allow only less efficient ones; and the rules are accepted just because they make this activity possible. The short version: playing a game is voluntarily attempting to overcome obstacles that are not necessary (Suits 1978, p. 41).
Two points deserve notice. The first is "attempt": on this definition, playing is attempting, and one who loses is playing too. The second is "just because": accepting the rules just because they make the activity possible is what he calls the lusory attitude; but this does not exclude further reasons: making the activity possible is a reason that must be present, not necessarily the only one (p. 144).
5.2 Two Sides of the Rule
Suits's "voluntary" is close to Overview 6.1, condition 4. The lusory attitude, however, is an attitude, and this series looks only at structure, not at what is in the mind (Overview 3.1); so it does not say that the two accounts agree on this point.
The real difference lies in the rule itself. In chess one may not just take the opponent's king off the board: for Suits this is a deliberately set obstacle that blocks the easiest way; for this paper it is a construct: only once this rule is in place is there a visible remainder in "how one can still move here". The two views look at two sides of the same rule; they are not two answers to the same question.
5.3 Playing for Money
Suits holds that professional players who compete for money, for a living, are still genuinely playing, and that motives from outside the game can coexist with the lusory attitude (pp. 143–144). This does not conflict with this series: professional players and contests with prize money are regarded in this series as two shares side by side, play and work (Overview 3.3, 4.3).
Where the two accounts really part is gambling. In setting out his definition, Suits uses winning money according to the rules of poker as an example of winning (pp. 22–23); this series instead places gambling outside its scope, on the ground that the stakes tie this share to what lies outside the game (Overview 4.3). This is a scope convention, used here for contrast. What he thinks of gambling itself, this paper does not infer on his behalf (to be verified).
He also has a utopia argument: in utopia all instrumental activity has been done away with, and it is precisely game-playing that makes utopia intelligible (secondhand). This paper does not develop it.
6. Two Difficulties
6.1 Games One Cannot Stop
Some games are designed so that one cannot stop: level after level, rewards coming in waves, so that stopping feels like losing out. Such games must be looked at as two kinds (Overview 6.1, condition 4).
While the way out is still open, being unwilling to stop, finding it hard to stop, stopping at a cost: all of these still fall within the first kind. The player's share may still be play; one cannot say he is not playing on the ground that he cannot stop. The designing side, however, is doing things with play, and plainly infringes the right of exit. D35 of Action Theory Paper 6 speaks of not sealing off the other's channels of refusal, revision, exit and change of direction; that item originally stands in the section on cultivation, and applying it here to the design of games is this series' extension. If the way out is completely sealed off, then that game is no longer play for him: he is colonized.
How are the two kinds to be told apart? On the designing side, look at how it narrows the conditions of exit; on the player's side, look at whether he can actually exit. An exit button on the screen does not by itself show that the way is open; one very long session does not by itself show that the way has been sealed off; and still less can one failure to stop, by itself, show that his capacity to negate himself is gone. When Overview 3.5 says that the subject will never be forever without the intention to take part in play, it speaks of play as a whole class; it has no bearing on whether a particular game can be stopped.
Here is how this bears on judgment: whether to stop is the player's own choice about this game; when design presses down on exit, what it presses down on is precisely the conditions under which he makes that choice himself. What he actually saw in making this choice must be looked at separately; the two actions of stopping and continuing do not by themselves prove that judgment and practice have taken place. How the right of exit is to be aligned with the SAE Rights Theory is left to Section 9.
6.2 Sinking into the Game, Forgetting Oneself
Gadamer says that it is precisely the experience in which only one person is playing that shows that the real subject of play is not the player but play itself (Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 106). Someone spends an afternoon on a jigsaw puzzle and only on looking up finds that it has grown dark. He has sunk into the game and forgotten himself. How does this coexist with "this judgment is mine"?
This paper's reading: the two fall in different places. What follows is limited to experiences like this one, of a person doing a jigsaw puzzle alone.
Forgetting oneself is a matter of attention. His attention falls on the pieces, not on himself; attention is recorded by subject, and acts or shares of attention running in parallel are recorded separately (Overview 3.2, 7.6). Immersion does not change the focal point either: his share is still tied to what lies inside the game (Overview 3.3).
"This judgment is mine" is a matter of ownership and retraction. It does not require him to be thinking of himself at this moment; it requires only that that judgment is one he made and one he can retract. He puts a piece in the wrong place, sees "not here", and retracts the judgment of a moment ago; this retraction is precisely the reflexive negation of 13DD; taking the piece out is the action that follows. Neither requires him first to step out of the game and look back at himself.
Laughter II, 1.1 says that at 13DD negation is "for the first time taken as one's own". This paper reads "taken as" as the position of this layer: that judgment can be retracted by him as his own; it does not read it as attention falling on himself at that moment.
So immersion and "this judgment is mine" do not conflict: attention can be wholly on the game, and that judgment is still his. Gadamer asks about the mode of being of play; what this paper sorts out is the structure of the game and to whom the player's judgment belongs; the two are not opposite answers to one and the same question (Paper III, Section 9).
7. Why Writing Is Not Here
Writing looks like a solitary affair too, but in fact even while writing one is not alone. The writer must imagine how the reader will read, for instance when he plants a clue. Although at the moment of writing there is only one subject, the construct is organized toward another person's reading; when one plays chess against oneself, the construct is not directed toward anyone's reading. So writing belongs in Paper III, as the writing side of the telling–listening game (Paper III, Section 8).
8. Terms
- The solo game: on the other side there are only rules and material, and nothing sought by another subject (Section 1).
- The response of the material: whether the blocks will topple, where this piece fits; in the solo game the remainder can show itself here (Section 1).
- Retraction: the reflexive negation of 13DD retracts the validity of that judgment; the taking down, moving back and rebuilding that follow the retraction are actions (2.2).
- Yardstick: something set up by the rules that one can lose to: a score, a time limit, a record, one's previous self. Clearing a level, finishing a puzzle, solving a problem are not yardsticks (4.1).
- One's previous self: a yardstick, not another subject (4.2).
- The right of exit: where the way out is open, the player's share may still be play, and the designing side infringes the right of exit; where exit is completely sealed off, that game is not play for him: he is colonized (6.1).
- For all other terms, see Overview, Section 12.
9. Questions Left Open
This paper has touched several questions without answering them. To say that solitary playing about with almost no explicit rules is a game, one must be able to point to the constraints it keeps to, and then show through instances what those constraints have not fully taken in and how the player sees the remainder; this paper does not go through the cases one by one. Reviews in developmental psychology say that the simplest acts of pretend play appear at around twelve to eighteen months, and mirror self-recognition mainly at eighteen months to two years, so that the former can come before the latter (secondhand); how the pretend play of younger children is to be viewed, this paper does not decide. How one's previous self is to be read together with "the future self" of Laughter IV, and how the right of exit is to be aligned with the SAE Rights Theory, are both left for separate treatment. This paper's reading in 6.2 says only that immersion and reflexive negation do not conflict; whether, during immersion, retraction comes quickly or slowly, or comes at all, depends on instances. Suits's view of gambling itself is to be verified.
Conclusion
When one person plays, there are only rules and material on the other side. The move the rules do not settle and the response of the material are the two places where the remainder shows itself; seeing that "this game still has such a remainder" is that judgment, and how the hand moves is another matter. This kind of game newly opens 13DD: this move is mine, and so is a misreading; "I misread that just now" is said by the player himself. The same game can be played again; judgment is put to use time after time, owned by the player himself.
In pretend play the stick is a stick and also a horse, and both readings are held. With a yardstick set up, one can stand at 14DD even in a solo game; one's previous self is a yardstick, not another subject. The same rule that Suits sees as an obstacle, this paper sees as a construct. Games one cannot stop must be divided according to whether the way out is still open or has been sealed off. As for sinking into the game and forgetting oneself, for experiences like this one, of a person doing a jigsaw puzzle alone, this paper's reading is that forgetting oneself is a matter of attention and "this judgment is mine" a matter of ownership and retraction, and that the two do not conflict.
References
SAE upstream
- Han Qin. SAE Exercises and Games of Judgment · Overview. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23609837. Section 2; 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5; 4.3; Section 5; 6.1; 7.3, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7; Section 8; Section 12.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · Overview: Judgment and Laughter. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23286244. 2.2.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · I: Laughter as Tendency (11DD+12DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287462.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · II: This Judgment Is Mine (13DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287559. 1.1, 4.2.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · IV: The Laughter of Despair and the Knowing Smile (15DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287669. Abstract.
- Han Qin. Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22970777. D35. Checked against the current page.
- Han Qin. SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23541778. H14. Checked against v1.1 (Zenodo record 23554913).
- Han Qin. SAE Rights Theory, Paper 4; Paper 5 (10.5281/zenodo.21093939; 10.5281/zenodo.21212595). Cited as a pointer only; to be verified.
External
- Suits, B. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978. The long definition and the short form, p. 41; the poker example, pp. 22–23; professional players and further reasons, pp. 143–144: checked against a scan of the original book. The utopia argument secondhand (third edition, Broadview 2014, pp. 188–194); his verdict on gambling itself, to be verified.
- Bateson, G. "A Theory of Play and Fantasy." A.P.A. Psychiatric Research Reports II (1955); reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. The phrase "This is play" checked against the 1987 reprint (pp. 183, 185–186); the pages of the original 1955 publication not checked.
- Gadamer, H.-G. Wahrheit und Methode (1960); English translation Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, trans. J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall (Continuum). The point about the experience of playing alone and the subject of play: English translation p. 106, checked; German GW 1, S. 112, secondhand.
- The developmental timing of pretend play and mirror self-recognition: Gowen (1995), "The Early Development of Symbolic Play"; Amsterdam's (1972) mirror mark test. Both secondhand; the originals not seen.
Appendix Table: Connections and Contrasts
For reference. Sources are given at each point in the text; this table sets up no claim of its own.
| Point in this paper | Connection (within SAE) | Contrast (external) |
|---|---|---|
| The solo game: rules and material; the remainder can show itself in two places | Overview, Section 2 | — |
| That judgment; prediction is material | Overview 2.3; Laughter I | — |
| This judgment is mine; retraction is the business of reflexive negation | Laughter II, 1.1, 4.2 | — |
| Pretend play: both readings hold; constraints | Laughter Overview, 2.2; Overview 6.1, condition 1 | Bateson 1955 |
| The yardstick; end states are not yardsticks; one's previous self | Overview 7.3, 7.7; Relation Theory Paper 2, H14; Laughter IV | — |
| Two sides of the rule; playing for money | Overview, Section 2, 3.1, 4.3 | Suits, The Grasshopper |
| Games one cannot stop; the right of exit | Overview 6.1, condition 4; Action Theory Paper 6, D35; Rights Theory P4, P5 | — |
| Immersion and this judgment is mine | Overview 3.3, 7.6; Laughter II, 1.1, 4.2 | Gadamer, Truth and Method |