Question of the Day, October 2, 2010

[The Escapist Staff]

Question of the Day, October 2, 2010



In Issue 273 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_273/8159-The-Philosophy-of-Game-Design-part-1] of The Escapist, Robert Yang discusses what makes a game good. Putting an interesting twist on things, Yang considers what ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle would say makes a good game. Who is your favorite philosopher? Why?

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[TheGreenManalishi]

Wittgenstein all the way. He's the only person who could reduce Plato's universals to mere linguistic concepts. Badass.

Also, he had a reet cool fringe.

 

[gnomebard]

I voted other. my vote is for "Sun Tzu."

 

[Bassman_2]

Anaximander


I forgot why....

 

[Xhu]

Diogenes [http://members.optushome.com.au/davidquinn000/Diogenes%20Folder/Diogenes.html].

 

[vic_elor]

I prefer Plato for his strict logical method... Discard falsehoods, take whatever can be proven to be absolutely true and then add to it, one block at a time until you tower of absolutely true (and often trivial) information has gotten you somewhere surprising.

Such a method should be basically impossible to fail and yet it does so often (Don't believe me, read the discussion Socrates has with his comrades as he prepares to be executed. It's so elegant yet falls completely flat on it's metaphorical face because an early "absolute truth" isn't as absolute-y as assumed. Even if this method fails you learn something interesting about the assumptions you or your friends make)

 

[rabidmidget]

Dammit, that's a hard one.

Let's see, Kant's out, because I hate his love affair with the term "a thing in itself".

Nietzsche is interesting, but I don't really follow his philosophies.

I think I'll choose Descartes, for "I think therefore, I am" and his ideas about the existence of the world.

 

[barash]

Descartes - thinking nearly drove him insane

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/rene_descartes.html

 

[Flying-Emu]

I prefer John Locke; his political works essentially created the United States as we know it.

I could never choose Plato... his "Utopia" is scary as hell

 

[Nocta-Aeterna]

I haven't read enough of each philosophers works to really decide who my favourite is, though I did read a little Kafka and Sartre.

 

[2xDouble]

Plato and Aristotle, but no Socrates? Disappointing...
Oh well, there are only so many poll options.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

If anyone said Aristotle, they are provably wrong. I hate that guy.

I just Plato, though, because my favorite isn't up there.

 

[Voltaggia]

Thomas Hobbes. You should've included him...

 

[Jonluw]

Either Archimedes for understanding the whole displacement of water thing, or Nietsche for the nihilism. I don't know a lot about philosophy...

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

David Hume. I pretty much live by his philosophy that we cannot rely on repeated events in the past to predict events in the future.

Also, Leibniz simply because his philosophies are batshit insane.

 

[AkJay]

Cato is my favorite philosopher.

 

[Charli]

If anyone said Aristotle, they are provably wrong. I hate that guy.

Agreed.

Vote goes to Descartes.

 

[Betancore]

Out of the ones mentioned, then uh. Descartes, I guess. I like the way he broke everything down and built it up again, just to prove it all to himself. And a more recent one would be Simone de Beauvoir, but I suppose I mostly just enjoy making myself all depressed with her books.

 

[latenightapplepie]

I'm quite ignorant when it comes to most things, philosophy included.

So, I picked Sartre purely for this:

"L'enfer, c'est les autres".

I couldn't agree more, Sartre.