SAE Exercises and Games of Judgment · Overview
SAE 判断力练习与游戏·总论
The aesthetics series, the Laughter Series and Judgment and Weeping treat judgment in its expressions: beauty is seeing and cannot-not acknowledging; laughter is judgment felt directly; weeping is the jolt felt by way of emotion. This series is the last series on the side of judgment. It no longer treats judgment itself, but how judgment is practiced. There is more than one path to practice; this series takes up only one, play. This paper is the Overview, and its position is this: play is human nature; the focal point is the game itself; as regards the play-directed share, the practice of judgment is a result, not a purpose, and whether participants themselves take practice as their purpose is another matter; what is practiced is judgment, not the same judgment. The main thesis is: the same game can be played again, and each time judgment can differ.
A game takes rules as its construct, and the rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do. Judgment, in this paper's sense, is seeing that "this game still has such a remainder"; which move to make is action around that judgment. Play is defined by four conditions: game, person, focal point, voluntariness. The focal point is read from structure alone, not from the inner life: if this share is tied to what lies inside the game, it is play-directed; if it is tied to something outside the game, it is non-play-directed. The verdict falls on a given participant's share in this game; so a match can be play and work at once, when a player bets on the match it is only his own share that is not play, and when all the participants cheat together, it is no longer play. The three papers are divided by the structure of the game: the solo game, the competitive game and the cooperative game newly open, respectively, 13DD, 14DD and 15DD as layers at which the subject can stand; the layer lies with the subject and is often mixed, and the game itself is not at any layer. 15DD is worth practicing, yet it cannot be forced, much like cultivation.
The main contrast is Schiller. Both accounts say that play comes from human nature; he says that the aesthetic decides nothing for cognition or will, which is close to this paper's "practice is a result". They part at two points: he sets up the aesthetic as the only path, while this paper says play is one path; his play is directed at beauty, while in this paper the remainder in a game need not be beauty. Groos is the nearest neighbour: he answers why play exists in nature, this paper answers where judgment falls in a game; they are not asking the same question. Aristotle, Kant, Huizinga and Wittgenstein serve as further contrasts. This paper is about judgment, not a theory of play; the boundaries of play serve only to hold the scope and are not load-bearing: gambling is handled by a scope convention, games of pure chance as a boundary condition, and war and conflict are not play; all of these are registered only, not developed.
Keywords: Self-as-an-End, SAE, play, judgment, practice, game, remainder, focal point, playing again, cultivation, 13DD, 14DD, 15DD, Schiller, Groos, Kant, Huizinga, Wittgenstein
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: The Question and the Position
0.1 The Question
A child asks an adult to tell, once more, a story he has heard many times. He has long known that the wolf will come, and still he wants to hear it. Just before the familiar line, the adult pauses; the child does not wait, and supplies the line himself.
What does he get from this telling? The story has not changed, and he knows the ending. Merely foreseeing that the next line is "Here comes the wolf!" is prediction; it is material, and not yet judgment in this paper's sense (2.3). What this paper points to is something else: he sees that this time the same line can be picked up by him, here. "At this point it can still be picked up like this" is that judgment; whether to speak up, and how to shout it, is action around that judgment. The game of the story has been restarted, and the remainder he sees this time can differ from the one he saw last time. The same game can be played again, and each time judgment can differ. This is the main thesis of this paper; the example is worked through in 5.4.
The child meant here is already at 13DD; on the side of younger children there is the prediction of 12DD, which is registered only (Section 8).
SAE Judgment and Aesthetics with its thirteen rays, the five papers of the Laughter Series and the Laughter Series' Special Study, Judgment and Weeping, treat judgment as expression. This series is the last series on the side of judgment, and it asks a different question: how judgment is practiced. There is more than one path to practice; this series takes up only one, play.
0.2 The Position
Play is human nature. Play has no purpose outside the game; without using the word "purpose", one can say that the focal point is the game itself. This paper says "the focal point is the game itself", and not "play is an end in itself", because in SAE the word 目的 (purpose, end) is the word for one's own purpose at 14DD, and also the word in "a person is an end".
The practice of judgment is a result, not a purpose. What is practiced is judgment, not the same judgment. This concerns how this paper accounts for practice in play: as regards the play-directed share, practice is a result that may come about, and this paper does not take "play is for the sake of practice" as a general explanation. That someone may himself take practice as his purpose, this paper does not deny (1.2); this does not change the focal point (3.1).
Play is one path, not the only path. This paper does not say that judgment can be practiced only through play; it says only that the practice of judgment can go by way of play.
About judgment, not a theory of play. The boundaries of play serve only to hold the scope and are not load-bearing. Any derivation that serves only to draw the line of "play" more precisely, without changing a single sentence on the side of judgment, this paper does not undertake; marginal cases are left to Section 13.
Scope. This paper treats only play in which a subject takes part. Animals play too; that lies outside this series (Section 8).
For why the practice of judgment is approached through play, see 3.5; that is a reason, not a demand that anyone play.
0.3 Three Sentences
- The game: the rules are a construct, and do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do.
- Play: the focal point is the game itself.
- Practice: what is practiced is judgment; when the same game is played again, judgment can differ.
0.4 What This Paper Does Not Claim
This paper does not claim that play makes people better, does not claim that practice necessarily leaves a stable change, and does not claim that judgment practiced in a game carries over to outside the game; all of these need separate testing and are left to Section 13. It does not claim that everyone ought to play, and it does not rank persons: someone who does not care for a certain kind of game is not thereby judged to lack anything. Nor does it claim that all play guarantees practice: condition 2 of the four-part definition (6.1) requires only that a subject take part in this game; whether there is in fact judgment in this game, and whether there is practice, depends on the instance. Finally, this paper does not cover everything that everyday language calls play or a game. It takes the path of definition: claims such as those about human nature and practice are made only of the class so defined (Section 6, 11.3).
The order of the paper is as follows: first the question is separated from that of the nearest neighbour, Groos (Section 1); then come the game, the remainder and judgment (Section 2), the focal point (Section 3), the unit of the verdict (Section 4), the main thesis (Section 5) and the definition (Section 6); then the three kinds of game and the division of labour among the three papers (Section 7), the scope (Section 8), and practice and cultivation (Section 9); finally the contrasts with Schiller and the others (Sections 10 and 11).
1. Groos: Not the Same Question
1.1 The Preparation Theory
In the preface to The Play of Animals (1896), Karl Groos says that play is the "Vorübung und Einübung" of the relevant instincts, as opposed to "der späteren ernsten Ausübung" (pp. V–VI). The often-quoted sentence carries a qualification in the original: "vielleicht ist die Einrichtung der Jugendzeit selbst zum Theil um der Spiele willen getroffen; die Thiere spielen nicht, weil sie jung sind, sondern sie haben eine Jugend, weil sie spielen müssen." The preface to the English translation of The Play of Man (1899) describes itself as keeping to the same "practice theory". The book's introduction sets two criteria side by side: "The biological criterion of play is that it shall deal not with the serious exercise of the special instinct, but with practice preparatory to it"; "The psychological criterion corresponds with it; thus, when an act is performed solely because of the pleasure it affords, there is play" (English translation, p. 5).
1.2 Not the Same Question
Groos answers why play exists in nature: youth is perhaps set up in part for the sake of play, and play rehearses the serious exercise to come. This paper answers where judgment falls in a game. The two ask different questions and speak of different relations: he speaks of the relation between play and the serious exercise to come, this paper of the relation between judgment and the game. These are not opposite answers to one and the same proposition; this follows the method by which the last paragraph of Judgment and Weeping 1.4 compares that paper with Kant.
So when this paper does not adopt the functional theory, this means that it does not take it as its own answer, not that it denies it. A functional explanation can coexist with the player's not having practice as his focal point at this moment: a child running after a ball may at the same time be building up his body for the future; but what he is chasing at this moment is the ball, and this share is tied to what lies inside the game. Nor does this paper say that "practice is the player's own purpose"; this too only means that it does not take that as its answer. That someone is at this moment playing precisely with practice as his purpose, this paper does not deny, and this does not change his focal point either (3.1).
One point at which the two can be compared is their attitude to the future. The preparation theory stresses the serious exercise to come; this paper says only that judgment is put to use in the game, and makes no claim about whether it carries over to outside the game (0.4).
1.3 The Name, and müssen
In Chinese, Groos's account is usually called the "practice theory" (练习说), and also the "preparation-for-life theory" (生活准备说). This paper also uses the word "practice" (练习), so the two must be separated from the outset: his practice is the instinct's rehearsal for the exercise to come; this paper's practice is judgment actually put to use in the game, owned by the person himself (Section 5).
The "spielen müssen" in the sentence about youth is a functional necessity of instinct. When this paper says that the subject will never be forever without the intention to take part in play (3.5), it speaks of intention, and does not adopt the functional theory. The two are set out side by side here so that they are not read as one thing.
The entry "Spiel" in Eisler's Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (1904) reports that Groos lists "Freude am »Ursachesein«" (the joy of being a cause) as one moment of play; according to secondhand material, the phrase appears on S. 190 of the original, written "Ursache-sein". If this holds, it speaks of the player's joy, a matter of the inner life; it can be read side by side with "the focal point is the game itself", but does not serve as its ground: the focal point is read by structure, and is not set by where the joy falls (3.1, 3.3).
1.4 Aristotle: The Opposite End
Nicomachean Ethics X.6 cites Anacharsis: "παίζειν δʼ ὅπως σπουδάζῃ", play in order to be in earnest; amusement is like rest, and rest is for the sake of activity ("ἕνεκα τῆς ἐνεργείας", 1176b27–1177a1). The English translations have exert oneself (Ross) or work (Rackham); this work is not "work" in the technical SAE sense.
For him, one plays in order to be in earnest, and amusement is for the sake of activity. This is an answer to "why play?", on the same side as the functional theory (1.2). By 3.1, such an "in order to" is not a structural marker and does not change the focal point. This paper stands at the opposite end, and the opposition lies in the answer: this paper does not answer play with "for the sake of what"; the focal point is the game itself; whether, having played, people are better able to be in earnest, this paper does not claim (0.4).
2. Game and Remainder; Judgment in This Paper's Sense
2.1 The Game
Following Laughter Overview, Section 0 and 2.1, a construct is any way of grasping that is currently in operation; a remainder is the point that the construct has not fully taken in, and that is nonetheless right there before one's eyes.
A game takes rules as its construct. The rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do: the rules of chess lay down how each piece moves, but not which move to make in this game; the steps of a dance are fixed, but not which way one's dance partner turns at this moment; the story has been told up to here, and the next line has not yet been spoken.
2.2 The Same Shape as Laughter I, 4.1, but a Different Remainder
Laughter I, 4.1 gave an example in which construct and remainder are kept at the same time: in rough-and-tumble play, the shape of attack is there, and the remainder "not really an attack" is there too. This paper puts forward a separate proposition: in each of the kinds of game discussed, the rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do. This proposition is shown by this series kind by kind; it does not rely on that example from the Laughter Series for its warrant.
In this way, a story whose ending is known and a well-rehearsed performance can also be accommodated: the remainder need not be only "what happens next"; it can also be how the teller tells it this time, or how one's dance partner responds this time.
2.3 Judgment in This Paper's Sense
Judgment in this paper's sense takes the shape it has in the Laughter Series: seeing that "this game still has such a remainder". In an endgame, it is "here one can still move like this"; in a story, it is "it can still go like this".
This judgment has to be kept apart from two things. One is action: which move to make is action around this judgment, by the same method as Laughter III, 1.3 uses to separate "laughter as judgment" from "doing things with laughter". A person can see a move and not make it, or can make a move and only see afterwards what was good about it. The other is prediction: predicting the next move is already there at 12DD (Laughter I). A listener to a story will predict what happens later; that is material. From 13DD up, that judgment has an owner, "this judgment is mine" (Laughter II): he does not merely foresee what the next step will be; he sees that the story can still go like this.
2.4 Games of Pure Chance: A Boundary Condition
Games of pure chance, such as throwing dice for the higher number with nothing staked, are registered by this paper as a boundary condition; it does not decide whether they are play. Pure chance does little to help the practice of judgment; this is the author's observation, not a proof. This paper keeps it only as a boundary condition, and does not go on to assert that there is no remainder to be seen in such games. Caillois says that in games of chance the player is passive, which can serve as collateral evidence for this observation (Paper II).
3. The Focal Point: Structure Only
3.1 Why Participants Take Part
This paper looks only at structure, not at the inner life, which it could not see in any case. Whether a person takes part out of vanity or out of interest, as long as the focal point lies inside the game, this share is structurally play-directed; if the focal point lies outside the game, it is non-play-directed. "Play-directed" speaks only to the focal-point condition; whether a share counts as play also depends on the other conditions of Section 6.
Why do participants take part? This paper brings the question down to structure: it looks at what this share is structurally tied to. Most often this is what it is tied to at the moment of entering the game; stakes placed only after the match has begun are treated the same way (4.2). There are four checkable structural markers: stakes, contracts, prize money and the demands of others. In gambling, winning and losing are tied to the stakes; in a match with prize money, the result is tied to the prize money; when professional players take the field, a contract is attached; writing to satisfy an editor is tied to the demands of others, and is work.
Playing for the sake of one's own practice is not among these four, and it keeps the focal point on play (this share is still tied to what lies inside the game, and is play-directed): someone who wants to practice, once in the game, is all the same playing this game of chess. Whether "wanting to practice" is, for a given person, a passing intention or a purpose on the line of "what I should become" depends on what he actually holds at this moment, which this paper, following the Laughter Series and Judgment and Weeping, calls "what is held" (Section 7); whichever it is, it does not change the focal point.
3.2 Each Kind of Material Has Its Own Office
Three things come up in discussing the focal point, and each has a different office. The checkable material is rules, agreements and settlement relations; who stakes and who pays is a checkable item within the settlement relations, used to show how participation is taken up, not to derive the boundary. The auxiliary supposition is the deletion test: remove the thing outside the game and see whether it is still that game; this needs grounds and cannot bear weight on its own. The fallible hint is the subsequent drift of talk: what it looks at is attention, and attention is recorded by subject; it does not enter the determination of the focal point, nor can it be inferred backwards from whether someone plays or not: a person who stops playing may simply be tired.
3.3 Focal Point and Focus on Separate Axes; the Focal Point Can Be Split into Shares
The "focus" of the Laughter Series and Judgment and Weeping is whether attention falls on the remainder or on the construct; this paper's "focal point" is structural and says whether this share is tied to what lies inside the game or outside it. The two do not lie on one axis and can cross. This paper does not use the word "focus" to speak of the focal point.
Winning and losing in a game can be tied at once to the game and to something outside it, so the focal point can be split into shares. When a match has prize money, the match is both play and work, and the two shares are looked at separately; professional players lean more toward play during the match, while preparation and discussion outside the match lean more toward work. "Leaning toward play" speaks of what is primary and what is secondary in the structure; it does not claim already to know the proportions of attention in the player's mind: during the match, every move is taken up by the construct of the game, and prize money and contract are tied only to the result; preparation outside the match, which is not itself a game, leans toward work. What is primary and what is secondary is settled by which construct is taking up the moves at this moment.
Sportsmanship is a direction: toward treating the match as play. The world of sport may require it of competitors; that is the field's own convention. This paper writes no "ought" for players.
Rankings can lie inside the game. Rankings and results decided by the rules lie inside the game; how they are tied to income, qualification or contracts is another matter. League points cross games relative to a single match, and yet may be part of the constitutive rules relative to the league as a whole.
This point concerns only the focal point, not the layer. The layer, by the method of the Laughter Series and Judgment and Weeping, depends on what the subject actually holds (Section 7).
3.4 Doing Things with Play
Laughter III, 1.3 separates laughter as judgment from doing things with laughter, and Judgment and Weeping separates weeping from doing things with weeping; following them, this paper separates doing things with play from play. Playing to win something else, arranging games for others, institutions organizing games (military exercises or leagues, for instance): all of these are doing things with play. Doing things with play can be cultivation, and it can be colonization (Section 9); doing it to satisfy the demands of others is work. In general: as regards a given share, where play itself is not the focal point, it is not called play; the other shares in the game are each looked at on their own (Section 4). Playing for the sake of one's own practice does not belong in this list (3.1).
3.5 The Subject Will Never Be Forever Without the Intention to Take Part in Play
This paper's position on play as human nature is this: the subject has judgment and so will want to improve it; play is a natural way in; the subject will never be forever without the intention to take part in play.
This sentence speaks of play as a whole class, not of any particular game. A particular game must be entered of one's own accord and must be possible to leave (6.1, condition 4); one is free not to play, and free to stop. The sentence does not contradict any of this, nor does it reach so far as whether a particular game can be stopped.
"Intention" here is taken in its everyday sense, not as the intention of Laughter III, 2.2 cited in 7.4. For a given person, whether it is a passing intention or a purpose on the line of "what I should become" depends on what he actually holds; whichever it is, it does not change the focal point. So it does not contradict "play has no purpose outside the game": the focal point is read by structure, the layer by what is held (7.1).
Nor does it follow from this sentence that anyone must be playing some game at this moment, or that someone who cannot be seen to be playing lacks anything. This follows the same method as Judgment and Weeping 1.4, which says that the overlap of cannot-nots "cannot be turned into an external demand, nor into an external verdict".
Of the word "cannot-not", this paper keeps only the upstream sense tied to judgment. If that judgment in a game is felt as the acknowledgment of beauty, as laughter or as weeping, its cannot-not is as the upstream papers state it (Laughter Overview, 5.2; Judgment and Weeping 1.4); whether the judgment in the game is itself a cannot-not, this paper does not say.
4. On Whose Share the Verdict Falls
4.1 The Unit
The verdict "play or not" falls on a given participant's share in this game; of the activity as a whole, one speaks only of its structural orientation. This is not the same unit as the one used in reading the layer: whether something is play is read by structure and falls on a share; the layer and the judgment are read by what is held and fall on a judgment (7.1).
4.2 Some Examples
When a player bets on the match, it is no longer play for that player himself, while the match, proceeding normally, is still play. His share is tied to the stakes placed on that game, and it makes no difference whether they were placed before or after the match began (this paper's reading).
Military exercises, like sports matches, are structurally both play and work. Those taking part are looked at one by one under 6.1, conditions 3 and 4; how to view the share of someone who takes part under orders and cannot leave is left to Section 13. Holding exercises to prepare for war is an institution doing things with play.
In education, the share of the one who arranges the game is doing things with play; the child's share in the game is looked at under the four conditions. A conflict between parents in front of a child, if it is a real conflict, is not play; if it is a sham conflict staged to educate the child, the focal point again lies outside the game, and it does not count as play either. If the child does not know it is staged, he is not a player who has entered the game, and that scene does not form a game for the child.
For someone who has been dragged in and cannot leave, it is only for him that that game is not play.
Cheating is breaking, or covertly altering, the rules both sides acknowledge, so that the game the opponent entered diverges from the game actually being played. When one side cheats, the cheater's share is non-play-directed and no longer counts as play; the opponent is playing according to the game he entered, and his share is still play; whether this amounts to colonization of the opponent is a separate question. When all the participants cheat together, it is no longer play. Cheating does not necessarily close off the remainder; it may only change the odds (Paper II).
4.3 Gambling and Matches with Prize Money
Gambling is not play; a game without stakes is play, and its focal point is the game itself (games of pure chance are treated separately as a boundary condition; see 2.4). This paper states the exclusion of gambling explicitly as a scope convention of this series, on the ground that the focal point lies outside the game. When a player bets on the match, what is excluded is his share, not the whole match.
Taken share by share: in gambling, the share of each person in the game is tied to the stakes, and the focal point lies outside the game; in a match with prize money, each participant has two shares side by side, play and work. The ground is whether the focal point lies outside the game; the items below only help to see this clearly and are not used to derive a universal criterion for drawing the line. Both have rules as their construct; whether 6.1, condition 1 is met does not affect the scope convention here. Settlement relations show how participation is taken up: stakes pass, with the outcome, from the losing side to the winning side, and the other party may be a player or the house; prize money, by contrast, is paid by a party that has staked nothing on the outcome of this game; chips that are counted only within the game and cannot be taken out of it are a way of keeping score, not stakes; trophies and certificates only mark a ranking, and lie inside the game. Removing the thing outside the game and looking again can also serve as an aid, but it is not load-bearing: the same card game without stakes has its focal point back inside the game; remove the prize money, and the outside tie formed by that prize money is removed with it, while the other ties, such as contracts, preparation for the match and the demands of others, still have to be looked at one by one.
As for judgment, a share whose focal point lies outside the game can have judgment in the game all the same: someone playing cards for money can just as well see that "this hand can still be played like this". Whether there was practice, and how far it went, depends on what actually happened in this game (Section 5). In this series the example serves only to hold the scope.
Whether entry fees pooled into a prize pot that the winner takes count as stakes, this paper does not conclude; it is left to Section 13.
5. The Same Game Can Be Played Again
5.1 The Main Thesis
The same game can be played again, and each time judgment can differ. This does not mean taking back a move within one game, but that the same game can be started again, time after time.
This is the main thesis of this paper, and it does not enter the definition: an improvised game, played once and never again, is still play.
5.2 Restarting
Restarting is returning to the starting point the rules lay down; how the results, points and records of the previous game are carried into the new one is up to the rules. Judgments, injuries, fatigue and trust that have already occurred are not revoked by a restart. For the item of judgment, this paper borrows the second half of Judgment and Weeping 4.1, condition 6: reflexive negation can afterwards withdraw the validity of what was judged; it cannot withdraw the fact that the jolt happened. Nor does a restart guarantee that judgment changes, still less that it improves.
5.3 What Is Practiced Is Judgment
What is practiced is judgment, not the same judgment. So whether practice has occurred cannot be settled merely by whether what was judged before and after is the same or different: judging the same way twice does not show that there was no practice; judging differently twice does not show that there was. Practice falls on judgment as a power, not on any single judgment.
The minimal commitment is this: judgment is actually put to use, and put to use anew, time after time in the same game, owned by the person himself. The ownership connects with Laughter II's "this judgment is mine": that judgment is his, and what is put to use is his judgment. In a game played only once, the one time judgment is put to use is the first of the "time after time".
As for practice in play as this series treats it, practice has to come down to the subject actually seeing the remainder of the game, owned by the person himself. This states how such practice is recorded; it does not determine where the focal point lies, nor does it exclude the practice of judgment outside play.
Each time, judgment can differ. Whether it does differ, where the difference lies, whether it can be retained, and whether it carries over to outside the game all need separate testing and are left to Section 13.
5.4 Tell It Again
A small child wanting to hear a story he knows well yet again is precisely the same game played again. Let us return to the child at the beginning (0.1) and work the example through.
The familiar course of the story is still there, and the convention of telling and listening already allows the child to chime in: this is the construct. The teller stops just before the familiar line; the course of the story does not lay down who is to say this line, and this point, which the construct has not fully taken in and which is nonetheless right there before one's eyes, is the remainder. The child does not merely foresee that the next line is "Here comes the wolf!"; he sees that the same line can, as it turns out, still be picked up by him, here. "At this point it can still be picked up like this" is judgment in this paper's sense; foreseeing the next line is material (2.3). Whether to speak up, and how to shout it, is action around that judgment; if he merely shouts out the familiar words by habit, the shouting alone does not show that he has practiced.
If this time it really was he who saw it and he who picked it up, then, in terms of the minimal commitment, judgment has once again been put to use in the same game, owned by him (5.3). This does not prove that his judgment is better than last time; neither judging the same way nor judging differently from before can prove such an improvement; nor does it mean that next time he will certainly pick it up like this again.
Laughter Overview, 4.3 also lists children asking again and again to hear the same joke as a difficulty of the same kind. One of its candidate explanations is that one stands once more in the place of the self that had not yet seen, re-enacting the original gap; from this it infers (again as a candidate) that the order and the pauses of the telling still matter. This paper's reading is different: what is seen this time can be a new remainder. The two can be read side by side; neither is evidence for the other.
6. Definition and Boundaries
6.1 Four Conditions
- Game. There are rules as a construct, and the rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do (Section 2). The rules can be tacit, but one must be able to point out what constraints this stretch of interaction actually keeps to: which moves or signals are taken up, and in what way, and what would change or end this game. Bateson's "This is play" is a hint of such a convention; the naming alone cannot prove that something is play. This is a weak condition; the weight falls on conditions 3 and 4. Casual conversation counts as play in the broad sense, just as a race two people decide on, on the spur of the moment, also counts.
- Person. At least one subject takes part in this game. Whether there is in fact judgment in this game, and whether there is practice, depends on the instance; where no material can point to judgment or practice, this paper does not say that there is any in this game.
- Focal point. Structurally, a focal point inside the game is play-directed, and one outside the game is non-play-directed (Section 3). A non-play-directed share is doing things with play, or work; the game is still a game.
- Voluntariness. Everyone in the game entered it of his own accord and can also leave; in a solo game, this condition concerns only the one who plays. Toward a party not yet counted as a subject, the way for it to turn away and not respond is not sealed off either; chimpanzees and the like are discussed separately in Section 8. For someone who has been dragged in and cannot leave, it is only for him that that game is not play; dragging him in is substituting my purpose for his law, that is, colonization (in the broad sense of Laughter Overview, 7.3). Bullying is colonization. Once someone is in the game, if the way out is completely blocked, the same holds: for him that game is not play; he is colonized. A game designed so that one cannot stop may still be play if the way out remains open, but it plainly infringes the right of exit (Paper I).
6.2 Boundary Cases
"Play" and "not play" are both said by structure, and the verdict falls on a given participant's share.
| Case | Where it falls | See |
|---|---|---|
| Casual conversation; a race two people decide on, on the spur of the moment | Play | 6.1, condition 1 |
| Listening to stories; watching plays, films, ball games | Play; the watcher is in the game | 7.8 |
| Dance; writing | Play; writing belongs to the writing side of the telling–listening game | 7.8 |
| Writing to satisfy an editor | Work | 3.1 |
| Professional players; matches with prize money | Two shares side by side, play and work, looked at separately | 3.3, 4.3 |
| Sportsmanship | A direction: treating the match as play | 3.3 |
| A player betting on the match | Not play for him; the match proceeding normally is still play | 4.2 |
| Military exercises | Structurally both play and work | 4.2 |
| A boxing match | Play; injuries carry over to outside the game, and both sides entered the game of their own accord | 6.1, condition 4; 6.3 |
| Gambling | Not play (scope convention): the focal point lies outside the game | 4.3 |
| A game without stakes | Play, the focal point being the game itself; games of pure chance treated separately as a boundary condition | 4.3, 2.4 |
| Games of pure chance | A boundary condition; no conclusion drawn | 2.4 |
| Bullying | Colonization | 6.1, condition 4 |
| War | Not play; the focal point is not play itself | 6.3 |
| Conflict | Not play; the focal point is not play itself | 6.3 |
| Conflict between parents in front of a child | Not play: a real conflict is a conflict; in a sham conflict staged for education, the focal point lies outside the game | 4.2 |
| Games designed so that one cannot stop | Way out open: may still be play, and the designing side infringes the right of exit; exit completely blocked: not play for him; he is colonized | 6.1, condition 4 |
6.3 War and Conflict; "Outside Ordinary Life"
War and conflict are both not play; in neither is the focal point play itself. War is conflict between states: the attacking side acts to colonize, the defending side to resist colonization. "Attack" and "defence" refer to the structure discussed in §5 of the SAE War Treatise, in which a 14DD side expands and a 15DD side defends, not to who in fact strikes first; the pairing "attack as colonization, defence as resistance to colonization" applies only to war. In a conflict there may be no colonizing side; it is also possible that both sides are resisting colonization; how to read this is handed over to the SAE Conflict Theory, and this paper does not develop it. Military exercises and boxing matches count as play.
Huizinga puts "outside ordinary life" into the definition; this paper does not adopt that item: it cannot, without interpretation, be equated with "harm does not carry over to outside the game". The boxing example serves only to illustrate this point and does not on its own constitute a counterexample to him (11.2).
7. Three Kinds of Game; the Layer Lies with the Subject
7.1 Two Ledgers
This series keeps two ledgers.
The game is recorded by structure. How many positions there are in the game, who takes up each, and how what each seeks stands toward what the others seek. The reading side may as yet have no real reader, as in writing: the reader imagined by the writer does not count as someone already in the game (7.8).
The layer is recorded by subject. At which layer a given person stands at a given moment depends on what he actually holds, and is often mixed. The layer sometimes cannot be read from outside; where it cannot, one says the material is insufficient, and does not fix the layer for him.
Judgment and practice also each have their unit. Judgment is analyzed by that judgment of a given person at a given moment (Laughter Overview, 6.1); practice speaks of this subject's judgment actually being put to use, and put to use anew, in the game, owned by the person himself (Section 5).
This method of keeping separate ledgers is borrowed from Laughter Overview, 6.1: "The layer of a laugh is set by the layer at which the laugher stands at that moment; the layer of the construct laughed at is recorded separately." What this series borrows is the method; this does not mean that the Laughter Series has already proved this series' threefold division; the threefold division is shown by this series, paper by paper.
7.2 Three Kinds of Game
| Game | What stands opposite | Remainder | The layer newly opened, at which the subject can stand |
|---|---|---|---|
| The solo game | Rules and material | The move the rules have not fixed; how the material responds | 13DD: this move is mine. With a yardstick set, one can stand at 14DD |
| The competitive game | Another subject, who seeks the same as I do, the two excluding each other: only one side can have it | His next move; how he anticipates me | 14DD: the game sets up winning and losing as what is contested, and "I want to win" can become the purpose of this moment |
| The cooperative game | Another subject; what is sought lies in one place, and is attained together | The partner's next move; what he wants | 15DD: the partner's next move is his, and is also part of what we want together |
| Mixtures of competition and cooperation | Team-against-team matches (cooperation within a team, competition between teams); the same pair of people with competition nested in cooperation (hiding and guessing in detective fiction) | Both | Both opened |
What the table lists is where the remainder can show itself; for that judgment in an actual case, one still has to point out which point, not fully taken in by which construct, the subject has seen. Predicting what he will do, or then deciding what I will do, does not thereby count as judgment in this series' sense.
It is hard to say that a game is at some layer. A layer is something the subject can himself stand at in the game, and very often it is mixed. The DD in each paper's title is to be read as the layer this kind of game newly opens, at which the subject can stand, not as the layer of the game. Opening is not a guarantee. In each kind of game the subject is often at several layers at once: in a solo game with a yardstick set, the subject can stand at 14DD; in a competitive game, one can also take the opponent as an end and stand at 15DD.
7.3 The Solo Game and the Yardstick
Why does the solo game newly open 13DD? The game needs a subject; opposite there are only rules and material, so what the game sets out is only "this move is mine", and nothing sought by another person. So the solo game too has a layer it newly opens.
In a solo game, if the rules set up a yardstick one can lose to, such as a score, a time limit, a record or one's previous self, the subject can stand at 14DD. Clearing a level, finishing a puzzle or solving a problem is an end state, not a yardstick. The rules are counted as the constitutive rules actually adopted this time.
7.4 The Competitive Game and Intention
The competitive game sets up winning and losing as what is contested, and opposite stands another subject, who seeks the same as I do, the two excluding each other. In establishing the possibility of losing, it is like the solo game with a yardstick; another subject standing opposite is what the competitive game adds. The game thereby invites "I want to win" to become the purpose of this moment, but does not guarantee it.
Following Laughter III, 2.2, an intention is not a purpose. A casual wish to win in a competitive game is a passing intention and does not yet reach 14DD; as regards this item of what is held, he often stands at 13DD, but where he stands still has to be looked at on its own; the other things he holds at the same moment are also looked at separately. Only when wanting to win falls on the line of "what I should become" (Laughter III, 1.1) does it reach 14DD.
7.5 The Cooperative Game and 15DD
Why does the cooperative game newly open 15DD? In both kinds of two-person game, the move of the one opposite is his. The difference lies in what is sought: in a competitive game, his move is what I want to beat; in a cooperative game, his move is part of what we want together, and this game comes off only when his move is still his and also joins up with mine. The writing side of the telling–listening game is treated separately; see 7.8 and Section 13.
So what the cooperative game sets out is a partner who makes his own judgments, and what he seeks lies in one place with what I seek. This is what "acknowledging him, not occupying his place in advance", in what is held at 15DD, looks like in behaviour; acknowledgment itself the game can only invite. The division of labour between the two, agreed moves and well-practiced choreography do not by themselves cancel his position as a subject either: such a structure leaves conditions for not occupying his place in advance, but does not guarantee that I have acknowledged him. Whether instrumental treatment has crushed his participation in the game is a separate question; my stance alone cannot change the structure of the game.
15DD can not only be practiced; it is very much worth practicing; worth it, but it cannot be forced, much like cultivation. "Cannot be forced" holds at two ends: others cannot force it, for forcing someone into a game is colonization (6.1, condition 4); nor can one force it on oneself: gritting one's teeth to make oneself acknowledge him at this moment is willpower, not a stance.
So the item of what is held that is aimed, at this moment, at "practicing 15DD" cannot reach 15DD; two doors stand in the way. One is toward him: to treat the partner as material for my practice is to require him to serve my purpose; Judgment and Weeping 4.1, condition 4 says "not requiring his loss to serve my good heart or my purpose", and carrying this into the game here is this series' extension. The other is toward oneself: non dubito is "not through self-coercion" (Psychoanalysis IV, §2.2).
On the same occasion, the player can also hold other things, such as wanting to dance this dance well; these are looked at separately, and having aims of one's own does not mean there is no 15DD at this moment.
"Worth practicing" comes down to going and playing, and to giving play the conditions in which it can happen. These are developed in Paper III.
7.6 Reading the Layer
The layer is read by the four rules following the table in Judgment and Weeping, Section 3:
- if a demand is withdrawn, re-read by the changed operation;
- if self-report conflicts with checkable words and deeds, that is a conflict of material;
- if different acts or shares of attention run in parallel, look at them separately; extending this rule to several things held in parallel is this series' extension;
- if there is only self-report, the material is insufficient.
The layer sometimes cannot be read from outside; where it cannot, it is not fixed for him.
7.7 The Timed Jigsaw
Someone is doing a jigsaw puzzle and wants to finish it in ten minutes. Opposite are the rules and the pieces: this is a solo game.
Whether the ten minutes have entered the constitutive rules of this game is the first question. If, before entering the game, he lays down that "it counts as done only if finished within ten minutes", the ten minutes become this game's condition of success, and are a yardstick; if it is only a wish and has not entered the condition of success, it is not a yardstick. Whether it has entered is read from checkable material: a timer set, a condition of success announced, a time recorded; if there is only self-report, the material is insufficient. With a yardstick, he can stand at 14DD; without one, 13DD opens as usual.
But the ten minutes having entered the constitutive rules shows only that this game has a yardstick set. Whether he has at this moment an ordinary intention or a purpose on the line of "what I should become" still depends on what he actually holds; whether or not he looks at the clock cannot, on its own, fix the layer. Where this cannot be seen clearly, one says the material is insufficient. In both cases the focal point lies inside the game, and both are play-directed: the yardstick is a rule inside the game, not something outside it.
7.8 The Division of Labour Among the Three Papers
| Paper | Games covered | Layer newly opened | Main contrasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview | — | — | Schiller (main contrast); Groos (nearest neighbour); Aristotle, Kant, Huizinga, Wittgenstein |
| Paper I | The solo game, including the kind with a yardstick set | 13DD | Suits |
| Paper II | The competitive game | 14DD | Caillois |
| Paper III | The cooperative game; mixtures of competition and cooperation; the telling–listening and performing–watching games | 15DD | Gadamer; Schiller's educational side |
One and the same activity can become different games. This is precisely the reason for dividing by the structure of the game and not by activity:
| Activity | Solo game (Paper I) | Competitive game (Paper II) | Cooperative game and mixtures (Paper III) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chess | Playing through recorded games, solving endgames | Playing a game against an opponent | Two people solving a problem together; doing the post-game review together after a game |
| Running | Running alone; a timed run (yardstick) | A race; a race two people decide on, on the spur of the moment | Relay (mixture) |
| Dance | Solo dance | Dance battle | Partner dance |
| Jigsaw | A jigsaw; a timed jigsaw (yardstick) | — | Two people doing a jigsaw together |
| Ball games | — | Singles, one-on-one matches | Team-against-team matches (mixture) |
| Stories and writing | — | — | The telling–listening game; watching plays, watching films; writing (the side of writing and hiding); hiding and guessing in detective fiction (competition nested in cooperation) |
| Casual conversation | — | — | Casual conversation |
Racing. Anthropologically, racing as play goes back very early (the author's observation; the anthropological material to be verified). In the historical sources, the funeral games held for Patroclus in Book XXIII of the Iliad include a footrace; Koroibos, the first recorded victor of the ancient Olympics, won the stadion sprint in 776 BC by the traditional dating (secondhand).
Those who watch are in the game too. Watching a ball game, a play or a film is play, and the watcher is in the game too. The telling–listening and performing–watching games have more of cooperation in them: in a live performance, performers and audience interact and create together. Watchers are not set up as a separate kind; the spectators at a sports match are also part of that match as a game, so someone watching a ball game is in the competitive game of Paper II or the mixtures of Paper III, not in the performing–watching game.
Writing. Writing, too, is not solitary: the writer has to imagine how the reader will read, as when planting a clue. While writing, the writer imagines for himself a virtual reader, that is, how he himself would think if he were the reader. So writing does not go into Paper I; it belongs to the writing side of the telling–listening game in Paper III; planting a clue is the "hiding" of hiding and guessing. At the moment of writing, a structure facing the reader is already set up: construct and remainder are organized toward another person's reading, without waiting for a reader actually to come. The use of writing in this series is that the writer changes places between the two positions of writing and reading (Paper III). Writing to satisfy an editor is work.
Casual conversation. Both people's focal point is on this conversation, and the partner's next remark is his, so it belongs to Paper III (this paper's reading).
8. Scope and Exclusions
The scope of this series is play in which a subject takes part; the subject is counted at 13DD (the terminology lock of Laughter Overview, 6.4).
Downward, several things are registered only, not developed. The tendency of 12DD, such as peek-a-boo on the infant's side; on the adult's side of the same game there is a subject, and that side is treated by this series. The play of animals; chimpanzees are read, following Laughter I, 4.2, as having entered the early stage of 13DD, and how their play is to be viewed is left to Section 13. The perceptual layer: by the method Laughter Overview, 8.2 uses for tickling, it is split into two stages; the jolt of dizziness is at 10DD; how high to swing, whether one dares let go, when to stop and how to coordinate with others already make a game with a subject, and the line between the two stages is left to Section 13.
Upward, 16DD, in which each takes the other as an end, is registered only.
What is not play: work, gambling (scope convention), bullying, war and conflict, and conflict between parents in front of a child (Section 6). Games of pure chance are a boundary condition (2.4). Doing things with play is kept apart from play (3.4). The estimate that, in hearing stories, one laughs first and weeps later belongs to the Laughter Series (Section 13).
9. Practice, Training, Work, Cultivation
As regards the play-directed share, the practice of judgment is a result. Arranging games for someone else's practice is doing things with play; playing for the sake of one's own practice keeps the focal point on the game (3.1). For the minimal commitment of practice, see Section 5; what it leaves behind needs separate testing. Work has its focal point outside the game; writing to satisfy an editor is work. Of training, this paper defines only one kind: repetition that is not itself a game and whose focal point is the next game or the next assessment leans toward work; this is not a common definition of all training. Practice matches and military exercises that are games in themselves are play; for someone who plays them for the sake of his own practice, the focal point is still on the game, and the work share comes from his post, a contract or an assessment.
Arranging games for others is doing things with play; it can be cultivation, and here this paper connects with Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6). D34 says that cultivation needs three things, that the other be willing to receive it, that he be suited to receive it, and that the time be ripe, and that none of the three can be answered on the other's behalf; and that cultivation therefore necessarily leaves blank space: what is left is not words but the other's own part: whether he accepts, how he judges, whether he changes, whether he leaves. D35 says that what still cannot be cancelled includes not legislating for the other, and not sealing off his channels of refusal, revision, exit and change of direction; this connects with the "can also leave" of 6.1, condition 4, and also with the right of exit in the example of games one cannot stop (Paper I). The one who designs a game one cannot stop is not necessarily cultivating; applying D35 there is this series' extension. D36 says that once something is claimed by his own law, it is his: in a game someone else arranges, the result that is practice is owned by the player; this item states only to whom it belongs constitutively, and does not imply that the one who arranged it contributed nothing. D37 says that the one who cultivates can also be cultivated, which connects with the "create together" of live performance in Paper III.
Doing things with play can also be colonization: forcing someone into a game and sealing off the way out (6.1, condition 4); using consequences to force someone to claim a win or a loss, or a judgment (Laughter Overview, 7.3).
There are two places upstream to connect with. The sentence in Education as Subject-Condition, §3.2, says that peek-a-boo is not merely a game for amusing small children but a training device by which 12DD is built. It speaks of the role this activity plays in building prediction at 12DD, on the side of developmental function; it does not follow that the players must take training as their purpose; this paper governs 13DD and above, on the players' side, and does not rewrite the upstream paper. Education as Subject-Condition, §7.3, places one meaning of prenatal education on the mother's side: for the mother, it is practice at 14DD–15DD. This paper borrows this as a contrast (this paper's reading): if on a given occasion the mother is directed toward the child, practice can occur on the mother's side as a result. This does not bring prenatal education into this series' play, nor does it use one upstream sentence to determine the actual layer of any occasion of prenatal education.
10. Contrast: Schiller (the Main Contrast)
10.1 The Passages Used
The passages in Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) that bear on this paper:
- Letter 15: "der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt."
- Letters 14 and 15: the play drive is the one in which the sensuous drive and the form drive act in combination; its object "wird also lebende Gestalt heißen können", that is, beauty in the widest sense. For the sentence "der Mensch soll mit der Schönheit nur spielen, und er soll nur mit der Schönheit spielen", this paper works directly from the German.
- Letter 21: "denn die Schönheit gibt schlechterdings kein einzelnes Resultat, weder für den Verstand noch für den Willen"; by this, man "von Natur wegen möglich gemacht ist, aus sich selbst zu machen, was er will".
- Letter 23: the aesthetic state "an sich selbst weder für unsere Einsichten noch Gesinnungen etwas entscheidet", and yet it is "die nothwendige Bedingung"; "es gibt keinen andern Weg, den sinnlichen Menschen vernünftig zu machen, als daß man denselben zuvor ästhetisch macht".
- Letter 2: "weil es die Schönheit ist, durch welche man zu der Freiheit wandert".
10.2 Two Points of Proximity
One is that play comes from human nature. The sentence in Letter 15 places play where the human being is human; this paper says that play is human nature (0.2).
The other is deciding nothing on a person's behalf. The aesthetic in itself decides nothing for cognition or will; it only makes a person able "aus sich selbst zu machen, was er will". This is very close to this paper's "practice is a result", and close too to the blank space that cultivation leaves (Section 9): play supplies conditions, and putting judgment to use is the player's own affair.
10.3 Two Points of Divergence
One is whether it is the only path or one path. He sets up the aesthetic state as the necessary condition for making the sensuous human being rational, "keinen andern Weg", no other way; this paper says that play is one path for the practice of judgment, not the only path.
The other is the object of play. His play drive is directed at beauty, and man "soll nur mit der Schönheit spielen", should play only with beauty; in this paper, beauty is one expression of judgment, play is one path for the practice of judgment, and the remainder in a game need not be beauty.
10.4 "Ganz Mensch"
The sentence about being "ganz Mensch", fully human, has to be read back in the context of the two drives and of the whole of one's capacities; it is not to be reduced to rating how complete a person is by how much everyday play he does. The limit of 0.4 still holds here: someone who does not play is not thereby lacking anything; nor does this paper, on the ideal of human wholeness, set up universal demands on people.
The ranges of what the two call "play" must first be aligned; this is a comparison of theoretical positions and is not used as counterevidence against one and the same empirical proposition. Schiller's educational side is developed in Paper III.
11. Further Contrasts
11.1 Kant
§9 of the Critique of Judgment says that in the aesthetic judgment the cognitive powers are "in einem freien Spiele" (AA 5:217). For him, free play is the state of mind in the aesthetic judgment; in this paper, play is one path for the practice of judgment; the "play" of the two places is not the same thing.
The Remark to §54 says: "Alles wechselnde freie Spiel der Empfindungen (die keine Absicht zum Grunde haben) vergnügt, weil es das Gefühl der Gesundheit befördert" (5:331); and he divides it into "Glücksspiel, Tonspiel und Gedankenspiel". This paper goes in the same direction as this passage only as far as the clause "die keine Absicht zum Grunde haben"; and "keine Absicht" takes gambling in as well. The "weil es das Gefühl der Gesundheit befördert" that follows is a functional explanation, on the same side as the functional theory that this paper does not take as its answer (1.2).
On gambling, he says that the gain in it "bei weitem nicht so groß ist, als das Interesse an der Art, wie wir es uns zu verschaffen suchen". This compares the strength of two interests and is a matter of the inner life; this paper looks only at structure and does not judge this piece of psychology on his behalf (3.1). He at once sets gambling aside with "da das Glücksspiel kein schönes Spiel ist"; what gambling is excluded from is the "schönes Spiel" discussed in that place, not play as such.
11.2 Huizinga
The definition in chapter 1 of Homo ludens (1938) contains the following items: a free action; consciously standing outside ordinary life; able to absorb the player completely; "geen direct materieel belang"; within deliberately bounded time and space; according to fixed rules; giving rise to communities.
"Geen direct materieel belang", no direct material interest, is itself a structural formulation, close to 6.1, condition 3. In the definition of chapter 1 it is a restriction on the activity of play as a whole; this paper, by contrast, looks at ties inside and outside the game separately, share by share. What is compared here is only the unit in which this definition is formulated: in chapter 3 he also says that the stakes of play can have material value, "Prijs kan een lauwerkrans zijn of een geldsom, of elke andere materieele waarde" (p. 79).
This paper does not adopt "outside ordinary life" (6.3).
Discussing war, he says that the contest element is at work when the warring parties regard each other as antagonists fighting for something they have a right to contend for; with the theory of "total war", the last trace of war's cultural function, together with its play function, is given up (chapter 5, p. 118). This paper says that war is not play. He looks at the contest element in war; this paper looks at whether the focal point is the game itself.
11.3 Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations §66: "Wie gesagt: denk nicht, sondern schau!"; §67: "die ›Spiele‹ bilden eine Familie"; §69: "Wie gesagt, wir können – für einen besondern Zweck – eine Grenze ziehen."
This paper does not present him as forbidding definition, nor does it use a definition to refute him. It draws this class for its own purpose, under two conditions: claims such as those about human nature and practice are made only of the class so defined; and the procedure is the same as in Judgment and Weeping 4.1, both drawing a class for the paper's own purpose, though this class is not as narrow as the one there. Whether the four conditions are circular, and whether they have explanatory power, is to be shown by the analyses in the papers of this series.
12. Terms
- Construct, remainder (构、余项): following Laughter Overview, Section 0 and 2.1. A construct is any way of grasping that is currently in operation; a remainder is the point that the construct has not fully taken in, and that is nonetheless right there before one's eyes.
- Game (局): a stretch of interaction that takes rules as its construct; the rules can be tacit, but the constraints it actually keeps to must be possible to point out (6.1, condition 1).
- Judgment, seeing (判断、判见): judgment in this paper's sense is seeing, that is, seeing that "this game still has such a remainder". Which move to make is action; prediction is material (2.3).
- Focal point (焦点): structural; it says whether this share is tied to what lies inside the game or outside it; tied inside, it is play-directed; tied outside, non-play-directed (Section 3). It does not lie on one axis with the "focus" (聚焦) of the Laughter Series and Judgment and Weeping: focus says whether attention falls on the remainder or on the construct. This paper does not use the word "focus" to speak of the focal point.
- Share (份): reserved for the unit of the verdict, which belongs to the focal-point axis, that is, "a given participant's share in this game" (Section 4). The "several things held in parallel" spoken of for the layer, and the "shares of attention" spoken of for attention, are different from this "share".
- Doing things with play (用游戏做事): action around play, kept apart from play (3.4).
- The layer newly opened (新打开的层): the layer a kind of game newly opens, at which the subject can stand; not the layer of the game (7.2). Opening is not a guarantee.
- Yardstick (尺): in a solo game, 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 or solving a problem is not a yardstick (7.3).
- Practice (练习): judgment actually put to use, and put to use anew, in a game, time after time, owned by the person himself; as regards the play-directed share, it is a result, not a purpose (0.2, Section 5).
- Training (训练): this paper defines only one kind: repetition that is not itself a game and whose focal point is the next game or the next assessment; it leans toward work (Section 9).
- Cultivation, colonization (涵育、殖民): following Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6); colonization is taken in the broad sense of Laughter Overview, 7.3: substituting one's own purpose for the other's own law (Section 9).
- Insufficient material (材料不足): when there is only self-report and no checkable words or deeds, the layer is not fixed for him (7.6).
- Cannot-not (不得不): not set up as a term of this series; only its upstream sense, tied to judgment, is kept. For play as a whole class, the paper says "the subject will never be forever without the intention to take part in play" (3.5).
- English: first apply this series' definitions, then fix the rendering context by context; it is not presupposed that 游戏 and 局 correspond word for word to play and game. Everything else follows the Laughter Series glossary and the Judgment and Weeping addendum.
13. Questions Left Open
On practice. What practice leaves behind: whether judgment differs, whether it can be retained, whether it carries over to outside the game; this paper answers none of these (Section 5). Whether "much like cultivation" can be said of oneself toward oneself is also a question: SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow says that the past self can cultivate or colonize the present self; this reaches the cross-temporal side, but not the side of "gritting one's teeth at this moment" to make oneself acknowledge him, that is, the side "toward oneself" of the second door in 7.5.
On boundaries. Games of pure chance are only a boundary condition; no conclusion is drawn (2.4). Whether entry fees pooled into a prize pot, the money coming from the competitors and the winner taking it, count as stakes: no conclusion is drawn (4.3). Cheating together can be each participant breaking, or covertly altering, the acknowledged rules, or it can be collusion directed at a third party outside the game; everyone openly agreeing to change a rule is starting a new game; how the two are told apart, this paper does not develop (4.2). Research out of curiosity, or a meal cooked for fun, can be let in by the weak condition of 6.1, condition 1; this paper does not go through them case by case (6.1).
On military exercises and work. For the share of someone taking part in an exercise under orders, this paper's reading is: if he cannot leave because of the work he has taken on (a post, a contract), it counts as work; if it is because someone legislates for him and drags him in, it falls under 6.1, condition 4. How he entered that work itself (conscription, for example), this paper does not judge. The same holds for a match in which a professional player must take the field under contract (4.2). Institutions organizing games, that is, doing things with play at the level of institutions, also awaits separate treatment (3.4).
On conflict and exit. How is a conflict in which both sides are resisting colonization to be read? One reading is that what is contested is not assigned to either side in advance; another is that each side holds its position of not being legislated for, and one side is not judged a colonizer in advance just because the two laws are incompatible. Both are handed over to the SAE Conflict Theory, and this paper does not develop them (6.3). How the right of exit corresponds to the SAE Rights Theory, and its concrete mechanisms and application, await separate treatment (6.1, condition 4; Paper I).
On writing. When, and whether, writing forms a game as a cooperative game, this paper does not settle; the use of writing in this series is changing places, which need not wait for this question to be answered (7.5, 7.8).
On scope. How the play of chimpanzees and other animals that have entered the early stage of 13DD is to be viewed (Laughter I, 4.2; Section 8), and where the line falls between the perceptual layer and games with a subject (Section 8): both await separate treatment. Education as Subject-Condition, §3.2, says that 15DD has its own peek-a-boo: the parents, in front of the child, going through conflict, acknowledgment, conflict, acknowledgment; and it says that "the 15DD peek-a-boo" is not a designed game but the quality of the relationship between the parents. The Education paper borrows the word peek-a-boo as a structural analogy; by Section 4, conflict between parents is not play; whether it is anyone's practice of judgment, this paper does not judge.
Handed over to the Laughter Series. Hearing stories: laughing first, weeping later. Judgment and Weeping, Section 11, handed this estimate over to this series: children listening to stories are able to laugh before they are able to weep. This item belongs to the Laughter Series, and this series does not develop it; designs such as same-layer comparison, comprehension load, quantifiers and spontaneous drifts of talk go to the Laughter Series with it.
Terms. Fixing the English renderings of the terms (Section 12).
Conclusion
This series is about how judgment is practiced, and it takes up only one path, play. Play is human nature; the focal point is the game itself; as regards the play-directed share, the practice of judgment is a result, not a purpose, and whether participants themselves take practice as their purpose is another matter; what is practiced is judgment, not the same judgment. The same game can be played again, and each time judgment can differ. A game takes rules as its construct, and the rules do not exhaust the grasping and responding that participants still have to do; judgment in this paper's sense is seeing that this game still has such a remainder, and which move to make is another matter.
Whether something is play is read from structure alone: if this share is tied to what lies inside the game, it is play-directed; if it is tied to something outside the game, it is non-play-directed. The verdict falls on a given participant's share in this game, so a match can be play and work at once; when a player bets on the match, it is only for him that it is not play; for someone dragged in who cannot leave, it is only for him that it is not play; and when all the participants cheat together, it is no longer play. Playing for the sake of one's own practice keeps the focal point on play. The layer lies with the subject and is often mixed: the solo game, the competitive game and the cooperative game newly open, respectively, 13DD, 14DD and 15DD as layers at which the subject can stand, and opening is not a guarantee. 15DD is worth practicing; it cannot be forced, much like cultivation.
The subject has judgment and so will want to improve it; play is a natural way in. This paper is about judgment, not a theory of play: gambling is handled by a scope convention, games of pure chance as a boundary condition, and war and conflict are not play; all of these are registered only and are not load-bearing. Schiller is the main contrast: both say that play comes from human nature; he says that the aesthetic decides nothing for cognition or will, which is close to this paper's "practice is a result"; he sets up the aesthetic as the only path, while this paper says play is one path. Groos is the nearest neighbour: he asks why play exists in nature, this paper asks where judgment falls in a game.
References
SAE upstream
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · Overview: Judgment and Laughter. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23286244. Section 0; 2.1, 4.3, 5.2, 6.1, 6.4, 7.3, 8.2.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · I: Laughter as Tendency (11DD+12DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287462. 4.1, 4.2.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · II: This Judgment Is Mine (13DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287559.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · III: Purpose Enters the Construct Laughed At (14DD). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23287629. 1.1, 1.3, 2.2.
- Han Qin. SAE Laughter · Special Study: Judgment and Weeping. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23446536. 1.4; Section 3 (the four rules after the table; doing things with weeping); 4.1, conditions 4 and 6; Section 11.
- Han Qin. SAE Judgment and Aesthetics — In Tribute to Kant (the SAE aesthetics general framework). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19296710.
- Han Qin. Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22970777. D34–D37. Checked against the current page.
- Han Qin. SAE Psychoanalysis (IV): Cert and Unification — The Self Beyond Doubt and the Four-Layer Framework. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19321534. §2.2, criterion 4. Checked against the current page.
- Han Qin. Education as Subject-Condition: A Philosophy of Education (the SAE education paper). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18867389. §3.2, §7.3. Checked against the current page.
- Han Qin. SAE War Treatise. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19656617. §5. Checked against the current page (English version).
- Han Qin. SAE Conflict Theory (Chinese title 冲突论：主体性如何不被冲突本身吞噬). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22313628. Cited as a pointer only; to be verified.
- Han Qin. SAE Rights Theory, Paper 4. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21093939. Cited as a pointer only; to be verified.
- Han Qin. SAE Rights Theory, Paper 5 (Chinese title 论基础权利的限与侵). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21212595. Cited as a pointer only; to be verified.
- Han Qin. SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23541778. Introduction. Checked against v1.1 (Zenodo record 23554913).
External
- Groos, K. Die Spiele der Thiere (1896). Preface, pp. V–VI. The original checked passage by passage against an OCR of a scan of the first edition; not collated with the page images.
- Groos, K. Die Spiele der Menschen (1899); English translation The Play of Man (1901). The preface and the introduction, p. 5, of the English translation checked (Project Gutenberg #58411, electronic transcription); the German has "Freude am Ursache-sein" on S. 190; the original's index lists this entry at S. 489 and 497 f., not at S. 495, although it is commonly cited as S. 495 (all of the German above secondhand).
- Eisler, R. Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe (1904), entry "Spiel". Checked against the electronic text at zeno.org.
- The names 练习说 ("practice theory") and 生活准备说 ("preparation-for-life theory") in Chinese textbooks. Secondhand.
- Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea X.6, 1176b27–1177a1. The original checked in Bywater's edition; the English translations by W. D. Ross and H. Rackham checked.
- Schiller, F. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (1795). Letters 2, 13–15, 21 and 23. The German checked passage by passage against a transcription of the Cotta edition of 1879 and the transcription at friedrich-schiller-archiv.de; not collated with the page images.
- Kant, I. Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), §9 (AA 5:217), Remark to §54 (AA 5:331–332). The sentences checked against a transcription of the Academy edition; the printed original not checked.
- Huizinga, J. Homo ludens (1938). The Dutch text of chapter 1, p. 41, chapter 3, p. 79 and chapter 5, p. 118 checked against the dbnl electronic transcription of the Verzamelde werken, vol. V (1950); not collated with the page images; the English translation secondhand.
- Wittgenstein, L. Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953), §66–69. §66–67 checked against the original; §68–69 checked against the German electronic transcription of the Wittgenstein Project, whose base text is the Werkausgabe, Bd. 1 (Suhrkamp, 1999), located by section number; the corresponding printed pages not collated.
- Caillois, R. Les jeux et les hommes (1958). The sentence on games of chance, "Le joueur y est entièrement passif", checked against a third-party transcription of Caillois's article published the same year in Synthèses (nos. 140–141); the book page to be verified (p. 56 in the Folio edition, secondhand).
- Bateson, G. "A Theory of Play and Fantasy." A.P.A. Psychiatric Research Reports II (1955); reprinted in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Already cited in Laughter I, 4.1; the phrase "This is play" checked against the 1987 reprint (pp. 183, 185–186); the layout of the original 1955 publication not checked.
- Suits, B. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (1978). Listed by name only in this paper; see Paper I.
- Gadamer, H.-G. Wahrheit und Methode (1960). Listed by name only in this paper; see Paper III.
- Belis, A. "The Ancient Olympics and Other Athletic Games." The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021. Names Koroibos as the first recorded victor of the ancient Olympics, winning the stadion in 776 BC. Institutional research, secondhand; the ancient primary records not checked.
- Homer. Iliad XXIII, the funeral games for Patroclus. The original not checked; secondhand.
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 (outside) |
|---|---|---|
| Play is human nature; not the same question; the functional theory not adopted | Judgment and Weeping 1.4, last paragraph (the method of comparison) | Groos 1896, 1899; Aristotle X.6 |
| The game: rules as construct, not exhausting grasping and responding | Laughter Overview, Section 0, 2.1; Laughter I, 4.1 | Bateson 1955 |
| Judgment is seeing the remainder; action and prediction kept apart | Laughter I; Laughter II; Laughter III, 1.3 | — |
| The focal point is read by structure only; doing things with play | Laughter III, 1.3; Judgment and Weeping, Section 3, "doing things with weeping" | Kant §54, the passage on gambling; Huizinga, "geen direct materieel belang" |
| The subject will never be forever without the intention to take part in play; "cannot-not" keeps only its sense tied to judgment | Laughter Overview, 5.2; Judgment and Weeping 1.4 | Groos, "spielen müssen" |
| The verdict falls on a share; gambling by scope convention | — | Huizinga, chapter 1, the definition formulated for the activity as a whole; chapter 3 (stakes can have material value) |
| Games of pure chance as a boundary condition | — | Caillois |
| The same game can be played again; what is practiced is judgment | Judgment and Weeping 4.1, condition 6; Laughter II; Laughter Overview, 4.3 | — |
| The four-part definition; the broad sense of colonization; the right of exit | Laughter Overview, 7.3; Action Theory, Paper 6, D35 | Wittgenstein §66–69; Huizinga, "outside ordinary life" |
| War and conflict | SAE War Treatise §5; SAE Conflict Theory | Huizinga, chapter 5 |
| Two ledgers; three kinds of game; the layer lies with the subject | Laughter Overview, 6.1, 6.4; Laughter III, 1.1, 2.2; Judgment and Weeping, Section 3, the four rules after the table | — |
| 15DD is worth practicing, cannot be forced | Judgment and Weeping 4.1, condition 4; Psychoanalysis IV, §2.2 | — |
| Practice, training, cultivation | Action Theory, Paper 6, D34–D37; Education as Subject-Condition, §3.2, §7.3 | — |
| Historical sources on racing | — | Belis 2021 (Met) |
| Main contrast | — | Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man |