The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia

•

THE GRASSHOPPER: GAMES, LIFE AND UTOPIA

ORAWINGS BY FRANK NEWFELO

BERNARD SUITS

GAMES, LIFE AND UTOPIA

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo

© University of Toronto Press 1978 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Design: William Rueter

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Suits, Bernard Herbert, 1925The grasshopper Includes index I. Utopias. I. Title

2.

game theory

335'·02 ISBN 0-8020-230 1-0

For Nancy and Mark and Conn

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xi

I

2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

I I

12

13 14 15

The players 3 Death of the Grasshopper 4 Disciples 12 Construction of a definition 20 Triflers, cheats, and spoilsports 42 Taking the long way home 50 Ivan and Abdul s8 Games and paradox 72 Mountain climbing 82 Reverse English 88 The remarkable career of Porphyryo Sneak 98 The case history of Bartholomew Drag 116 Open games 128 Amateurs, professionals, and Games People Play 140 Resurrection 154 Resolution 164

Preface

The Grasshopper of this book is the same Grasshopper w hom Aesop made everlastingly famous as the model of improvidence. But while Aesop was content to cast this remarkable creature as the hero of a cautionary tale, he appears here as the exemplification - and articulate expositor - of the life most worth living. Because he is a working Utopian whose time has not yet come, he is destroyed by his uncompromising dedication to a premature ideal. But because he is also a speculative Utopian, he is able to defend that ideal - and the death which is the predictable consequence of its whole-hearted pursuit - before the end comes. Central to that defence is the Grasshopper's claim that Utopian existence is fundamentally concerned with game-playing, and so the book is largely devoted to formulating a theory of games. That theory is not intended to be in any direct way a contribution to the field of investigation known officially as Game Theory, although it is possible that some game theorists may find it of more than marginal interest. Nor is the book essentially a contribution to sociology or social psychology, although it contains an extended discussion of role-playing and one section is addressed to Eric Berne's Games People Play. The orientation of the book is philosophical in one traditional sense of that word. It is the attempt to discover and formulate a definition, and to follow the implications ofthat discovery even when they lead in surprising, and sometimes disconcerting, directions. I am aware, of course, of the fairly widespread disenchantment with the search for definitions that currently prevails in the philosophical community, and indeed in the intellectual community generally. And Wittgenstein, one of the most forceful spokesmen (and certainly the

X PREFACE

most exotic) for the anti-definitional attitude, is famous for having singled out the attempt to define games as illustrating par excellence the futility of attempting to define anything whatever. 'Don't say,' Wittgenstein admonishes us, ' "there must be something common or they would not be called 'games' " - but look and see whether there is anything common to all.' This is unexceptionable advice. Unfortunately, Wittgenstein himself did not follow it. He looked, to be sure, but because he had decided beforehand that games are indefinable, his look was fleeting, and he saw very little. So I invite the reader to join me in a longer and more penetrating look at games, and to defer judgment as to whether all games have something in common pending completion of such an inspection. In order to avoid possible misunderstanding, I add a disclaimer. The following inquiry is not, and should not be taken to be, a kind of anti-anti-definitional manifesto, nor should it be seen as depending for its cogency upon a commitment to the universal fruitfulness of definition construction. It seems altogether more reasonable to begin with the hypothesis that some things are definable and some are not, and that the only way to find out which are which is to follow Wittgenstein's excellent advice and look and see.

Acknowledgments

Some parts of this book have appeared in print elsewhere. Chapter One, the last part of Chapter Three, and Chapter Fifteen are revised versions of parts of two essays first published in The Philosophy of Sport: A Collection of Original Essays (Charles C Thomas 1973); the first part of Chapter Three originally appeared under the title 'What Is a Game?' in Philosophy of Science 1967; Chapter Seven appeared under its present title in Philosophy of Science 1969; and several paragraphs in Chapter Three are taken from 'Is Life a Game We Are Playing?' which was first printed in Ethics 1967 (Copyright 1967 by the University of Chicago). Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publishers for permission to include that material here. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities Research Council of Canada, using funds provided by the Canada Council. The book owes its existence in large part to a number of people for their encouragement of and interest in my pursuit of the study of games over the years. For that I thank Charner Perry, Richard Rudner, J. Sayer Minas, Nathan Brett, and especially Jan Narveson. I would like to acknowledge a genuinely delightful association with the staff ofUniversity of Toronto Press, especially R.I.K. Davidson, Jean Jamieson, Margaret Parker, and Laurie Lewis. Finally, I thank Frank Newfeld for the graphic wit he has brought to my text.

THE GRASSHOPPER: GAMES, LIFE AND UTOPIA

The players

THE GRASSHOPPER SKEPTICUS

and

PRUDENCE

PROFESSOR SNOOZE DR THREAT SMITH

and

JONES

ROBINSON IVAN

and

ABDUL

THE VOICE OF LOGIC SIR EDMUND HILLARY PORPHYRYO SNEAK BARTHOLOMEW DRAG DR HEUSCHRECKE

A shiftless but thoughtful practitioner of applied entomology Disciples of the Grasshopper An accident-prone academic A murderer Two supporting players with a penchant for getting themselves into sticky but illustrative situations A friend of Smith and Jones who is invoked by them when needed Two retired army officers looking for a bit offun Nemesis of Ivan and Abdul A mountain climber The greatest spy in the world The greatest bore in the world A therapist consulted by Sneak and Drag

JOHN STRIVER

and

WILLIAM SEEKER

Two disgruntled utopians

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