Wittgenstein on Games

January 25, 2011 at 9:09 PM · Filed under boundary objects, games, interaction, metaphors, symbolic systems

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a Viennese philosopher intent on language, its meaning, and its interactions with the physical environment– or more precisely, the public space of use. His writings have influenced education, mathematics, art, and others for their critical approach to language, meaning, metaphor, and our representation of a shared environment. His work Philosophical Investigations (2nd Ed., Trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe) takes a decidedly non-linear approach, where his analysis of language straddles a landscape in which games are played, rules made, and mental images resonate with the spoken and written word.

Interspersed within Philosophical Investigations are a handful of passages that describe some general properties of games. In the book, they connect to other passages that explore language-games, rules, imagery and so on, but I’ve chosen these for their generality. In the work, the discussions proceed from an unwrapping of language and games into and understanding of the rules for play – i.e. grammar. Here we are only interested in the meaning of a game.

I’ve extracted these passages, to separate them (for the moment) from language. You’ll see lots of errors in the text because used OCR (optical character recognition). I was tempted to tidy it up, but given the general theme of the work, I think it’s fitting. Enjoy!

3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication;
only not everything that we call1anguage is this system. And one
has to say this in many cases where the question arises “Is this an
appropriate description or not?” The answer is: “Yes, it is appropriate,
but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of
what you were claiming to describe.”

It is as if someone were to say: “A game consists in moving objects
about on a surface according to certain rules …”-and we replied:
You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You
can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those
games.

3I. When one shews someone the king in chess and says: “This is
the king”, this does not tell him the use of this piece-unless he already
knows the rules of the game up to this last point: the shape of the king.
You could imagine his having learnt the rules of the game without ever
having been shewn an actual piece. The shape of the chessman corresponds
here to the sound or shape of a word.

One can also imagine someone’s having learnt the game without
ever learning or formulating rules. He might have learnt quite simple
board-games first, by watching, and have progressed to more and
more complicated ones. He too might be given the explanation “This
is the king”,-if, for instance, he were being shewn chessmen ofa shape
he was not used to. This explanation again only tells him the use
of the piece because, as we might say, the place for it was already
prepared. Or even: we shall only say that it tells him the use, if
the place is already prepared. And in this case it is so, not because the
person to whom we give the explanation already knows rules, but
because in another sense he is already master of a game.

Consider this further case: I am explaining chess to someone; and I
begin by pointing to a chessman and saying: “This is the king; it
can move like this, …. and so on.”-In this case we shall say: the
words “This is the king” (or “This is called the ‘king’ “) are a definition
only if the learner already ‘knows what a piece in a game is’. That is,
if he has already played other games, or has watched other people
playing ‘and understood’-andsimilarthings. Further, only under these
conditions will he be able to ask relevantly in the course of learning the
game: “What do you call this?”-that is, this piece in a game.

We may say: only someone who already knows how to do something
with it can significantly ask a name.

And we can imagine the person who is asked replying: “Settle the
name yourself”-and now the one who asked would have to manage
everything for himself.

54· Let us recall the kinds of case where we say that a game is
played according to a definite rule.

Th~ rule may.be .an aid in teaching the game. The learner is told it
~d gtven pract1c~ in applying it..-Or.it is an instrument of the game
~tself.-Or .a :ule IS employed neither in the teaching nor in the game
ttself; .nor IS rt set down in a list of rules. One learns the game by
watching how others play. But we say that it is played according to
such-and-such rules because an observer can read these rules off from
the practice of the game-like. a.na~ral.law governing the play.-B~
t how does the observer distinguish in this case between players’
mistak~s and ~orrect p~ay?-There are .characteristic signs of it in the
pla~ers behaviour, Think of the behaviour characteristic of correcting
a slip o.f the tongue”. It would be possible to recognize that someone
was doing so even WIthout knowing his language.

66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”.
I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and
so on. What is common to them all?-Don’t say: “There must be
something common, or they would not be called ‘games’ “-but
look andsee whether there is anything common to all.-For if you look
at them you will not see something that is common to all, but
similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To
repeat: don’t think, but look I-Look for example at board-games,
with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here
you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common
features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ballgames,
much that is common is retained, but much is lost.-Are they
all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there
always. winning and losing, or competition between players? Think
of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a
c~ild throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has
~sappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the
difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of
games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement,
but how many other characteristic features have disappeared 1 And
we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same
way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network
of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall
similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.

68. “All right: the concept of number is defined for you as the
logical sum of these individual interrelated concepts: cardinal numbers,
rational numbers, real numbers, etc.; and in the same way the concept
of a game as the logical sum of a corresponding set of sub-concepts.”-
It need not be so. For I can give the concept ‘number’ rigid limits
in this way, that is, use the word “number” for a rigidly limited concept,
but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not
closed by.a frontier. And this is how we do use the word “game”.
For how IS the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a
game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No.
You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. (But that never
troubled you before when you used the word “game”.)

.”B~t ~en the use of”the wor? is unregulated, the. ‘game’ we play
WIth It IS unregulated. –It IS not everywhere CIrcumscribed by
rules} but n? more are there any rules for how high one throws the
ball In tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has
rules too.

69. How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine
that we should describe games to him, and we might add: “This and
similar things are called ‘games”’. And do we know any more about
it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what
a game is?-But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries
because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundaryfor
a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable?
Not at alll (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took
the definition: I pace = 75 em, to make the measure of length ‘one
pace’ usable. And if you want to say “But still, before that it wasn’t
an exact measure”, then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one.Though
you still owe me a definition of exactness.

70. “But if the concept ‘game’ is uncircumscribed like that, you
don’t really know what you mean by a ‘game’.”–When I give the
description: “The ground was quite covered with plants”-do you
want to say I don’t know what I am talking about until I can give a
definition of a plant?

My meaning would be explained by, say, a drawing and the words
“The ground looked roughly like this”. Perhaps I even say “it looked
exact!J like this.” – Then were just this grass and these leaves there,
arranged just like this? No, that is not what it means. And I should
not accept any picture as exact in this sense.

Someone says to me: “Shew the children a game.” I teach them
gaming with dice, and the other says “I didn’t mean that sort of
game.” Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before
his mind when he gave me the order?

75. What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it
mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow
equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were
formulated I should be able to recognize it as the expression of my
knowledge? Isn’t my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely
expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing
examples of various kinds of game; shewing how all sorts of other
games can be constructed on the analogy of these; saying that I should
scarcely include this or this among games; and so on.

100. “But still, it isn’t a game, if there is some vagueness in the
~ules”.-But does this prevent its being a game?-”Perhaps you’ll call
it a game, but at any rate it certainly isn’t a perfect game.” This means:
it has impurities, and what I am interested in at present is the pure
article.-But I want to say: we misunderstand the role of the ideal
in our language. That is to say: we too should call it a game, only we
are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the
word “game” clearly.

200. It is, of course, imaginable that two people belonging to a
tribe unacquainted with games should sit at a chess-board and go
through the moves of a game of chess; and even with all the appropriate
mental accompaniments. And if we were to see it we should say they
were playing chess. But now imagine a game of chess translated
according to certain rules into a series of actions which we do not
ordinarily associate with a game-say into yells and stamping of feet.
And now suppose those two people to yell and stamp instead of playing
the form of chess that we are used to; and this in such a way
that their procedure is translatable by suitable rules into a game of
chess. Should we still be inclined to say they were playing a game?
What right would one have to say so?

563. Let us say that the meaning of a piece is its role in the game.Now
let it be decided by lot which of the players gets white before
any game of chess begins. To this end one player holds a king in each
closed fist while the other chooses one of the two hands at random.
Will it be counted as part of the role of the king in chess that it is used
to draw lots in this way?

564. So I am inclined to distinguish between the essential and the
inessential in a game too. The game, one would like to say, has not
only rules but also a point.

567. But, after ali, the game is supposed to be defined by the rules I
So, if a rule of the game prescribes that the kings are to be used for
drawing lots before a game of chess, then that is an essential part of
the game. What objection might one make to this? That one does not
see the point of this prescription. Perhaps as one wouldn’t see the point
either of a rule by which each piece had to be turned round three times
before one moved it. If we found this rule in a board-game we should
be surprised and should speculate about the purpose of the rule.
(“Was this prescription meant to prevent one from moving without
due consideration?”)

568. If I understand the character of the game aright-I might
say-then this isn’t an essential part of it.
«Meaning is a physiognomy.))

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Organizational Design I

January 25, 2011 at 5:32 AM · Filed under cognitive justice, community interaction design, complex systems, cybernetics, design ecology, ecology, futures, heterarchy, relational aesthetics, service design, symbolic systems

Design is a sticky practice.  It is looped with contradictions, uncertainties, and material constraints.  Bringing something new into the world, be it an artifact or service raises challenges that few individuals can surmount – if at all.  Despite the dominant view that geniuses, visionaries, and otherwise crafty individuals are solely responsible for designed creations, organizations play a far greater and often unattributed role.  Perhaps it is because of the aesthetic flair worked into the surface of the object or experience, or maybe it’s the personality of the driving individual that points us in the direction of these myths.  And they are myths, because even the most brilliant designer owes their success at the end of the day to at least one group – their participants, their users.  More likely is “rock-star” designers owe the production of a product or service to many more who inhabit a long chain in the process of design, implementation, and distribution.

Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry, South Wall"

Somewhere along the chain of causation between creative individuals and their users there exists a group of people, places, ideas, and things that operate synchronistically and synergistically to develop ideas into concepts, concepts into prototypes, prototypes into experiences, experiences into practices, and practices into lessons.  These sets of translations encompass different skill sets and relationships, few of which are possible without deep and varied interactions across different environments.

Taking stock of an emerging design practice is something we do often these days.  I think it springs from places that have recognized and internalized failures for what they are – opportunities – and from people who embrace reflection as positive forces for learning and adaptive change.

Our environments are changing.  And they will continue to do so.  Even if we find pathways to design static landscapes that include fixed social interactions, the resources and habitat available to us and other species will remain in flux.  Consider that in 2008, we reached the threshold where 50% of the world’s human population resides in urban dwellings (and possibly also 50% of the world’s population of cockroaches, starlings, street dogs, and sewer rats).

It’s also true that the biosphere can no longer be considered ‘natural’ in the same terms that 18th century Romantics did, as something pure, something to be conserved, something separate.  The landscapes of our contemporary experience are human enmeshed – neither dominated nor resistant to our desires to interact, to use, and to understand.  They show our preferences for stable communities supported by agriculture that reinforce a growing feedback loop between population growth and energy consumption.  The Anthropocene, as this epoch is now commonly referred to, places a point on some linear timeline where people demonstrated their best applications of the idea of progress. Perhaps it is only our external concept of the sublime that are disappearing from the human range of experience.

There is much greater landscape diversity than has ever existed, but certainly it is less inhabitable by the majority of the world biological diversity.  Landscape diversity is created not only by people and their continued interpretations of “safe” and “prosperous”, but also by animals and plants that push and get pushed into their own new and divergent niches.  Patches of materials are being collected and redistributed to form wild hybrids and pure spaces– bacteria-resistant surfaces, show rose gardens, crude oil-slicked sandy beaches, tourist-friendly rainforest, wildlife mobility solutions, skyscraper concrete pillars, semiconductors, and extra-terrestrial orbiting robots – to name just a few.

Each time new patches are created, they exemplify the desires and possibilities available for their inhabitants.  They provide food, space for living, courses for exercise, obstacles for navigation, challenges and threats between groups that aim to occupy more patches, places to hide, and places to trade. Evolutionary history has demonstrated that cooperation confers a significant strategic advantage to those who choose to communicate, share, and build together.  In human terms, one need only look at the migratory patterns of individuals from rural to urban settlements to understand that there is a direct and perceived economic advantage from sharing land, resources, infrastructure, and culture on people’s livelihoods – not to mention social mobility.

Detail from wall illustration at the Golden Temple, Namdroling Monastery, India

Design practices are widening. They are gaining breadth proportional to their influence on economic productivity, their ability to expand social engagement and political empowerment, and perhaps because of the impact that social studies of science and technology has provided to our appreciation of artifacts as catalysts for knowledge.  Scientists and technologists are viewed as inventors, individual carries of the modern ideal of progress.  We now recognize that images, laboratory spaces, institutions, public media, and mechanical parts play as significant a role in chance events, innovation, and the acquisition of scientific and technological dogma by civil society.

One of the implications of an expanded design practice is the gradual inclusion of organizations as ‘objects’ for design.  Organizations were once the purview of managers, business executives, policy makers, and human resources consultants, but they can now be confidently lumped together with paint, plaster, and photo emulsion.

I’m sure this is raising red flags for some who read this, and it should.  It’s a scary proposition for some to think that individual behaviors can and should be designed and organized. But it is a fact that individual and group behaviors are already structured by the designed and so-called natural environment along with normalized social interactions and perceptions of social agency.  The only thing we gain by ignoring the structures that are already in place (albeit unconsciously) is the freedom from self-awareness, individual and collective agency to solve more challenging and complex problems.  The more we ignore these unconscious behaviors (eating habits for example) that already exist, the more they leads us into deep patterns and habits that can be difficult to get out of for reasons of fear, inexperience, ability, or just a lack of awareness.

This is not to say it is all negative.  If we had to pay attention to everything we did, we would fall apart from exhaustion while trying to make complicated decisions.  Many of our biases may have developed because they habituate us into safe spaces for interaction.  Unfortunately, as our societies and environments change, those safe spaces may be retreating, and it’s worth reflecting on our biases and how our individual and group dynamics promote infrastructures for flourishing.

Organizational management has become a major discipline of the 20th century with the adoption of increasingly complicated tasks and industrial processes.  It stands to become more integrated into our systems and psyche, but will management theories dominate – or will design envelop management in favor more distributed processes of self-organization consistent with cybernetics and decision theory?

Groups change, and so do their goals.  It is a part of life and society, and it always will be.  The questions that we ought to be asking is how, where, through whom, and when do they change?

There is ample evidence that organizational behavior is at the root of innovation and robustness across enterprises.  The shape and tenor of a group of people, each with different tasks, and working towards a common goal varies widely – not to mention the tasks, people and goals – and that’s assuming those goals are shared among the group members!  Without going into the theory and practice of organizational behavior for which there is a massive literature, I simply want to raise the point that organizational design may be a more recent practice and one that plays a role in or strategies for adaptation, sustainability, and inclusive growth.

In part II, I’ll look at some examples where designers are tackling organizational design as project and process.

Diego Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads"

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