A man and a girl, respectively father and daughter, are playing at being two characters called Tree and Girl. Tree stands in the forest and Girl, who is wandering there, comes upon him and invites him to her house for tea. Tree explains that she'll have to uproot him first, which she does; she then shows him the way and helps him through the front door (he has to bend, being taller than the doorway). Girl gives Tree a cup of tea.Reminds me of playing "Horsey" with No 1 Son when he was little. He'd climb on my back and I'd carry him round the sitting room on all fours. When we were finished, he'd give me a pat on the back, an imaginary apple to chomp and tell me I was a brave horse.
But Norm is not pointlessly reminiscing, he goes on to discuss the central contention of a recent book on games by Bernard Suits:-
The Grasshopper's central thesis challenges Wittgenstein's view of games. To quote from Hurka's introduction to a new edition of the book:It beats me why some intellectuals feel the need to use such starkly aggressive metaphors. In any case, it seems Wittgenstein is in no danger, as Norm goes on to say in his second post:-
[I]n giving necessary and sufficient conditions for playing a game [Suits is] doing exactly what Wittgenstein says can't be done... His book is therefore a precisely placed boot in Wittgenstein's balls.
[Suit's] book, so far from being a boot placed where Thomas Hurka says it was, is more like a mislaid sock at the back of a shelf of philosophy books.I'm tempted to say game over, but Norm says he'll be posting more on the subject over the weekend. I'm looking forward to it.
