Maybe I'm misunderstanding things but it seems to me that this thread isn't really served by a discussion of whether morals are distinct from aesthetics.

If you think they're the same, then you can take Sett's statements are they are. If not (and I think some are confused because of this), then substitute aesthetics for morals.

I'll give an example of what I think Sett is on about, based on recent discussions. Reference these three threads:

Are the kids too weak for real challenges?
Killer GM Syndrome
What games are improved by making it easy?

At some point in these threads people started getting into arguments over the value of having fair fights with lethal consequences. Some said they wanted tales of heroism in their games; if games have a lot of lethal fair fights, characters are going to die, and there's nothing heroic about repeatedly rolling up new characters. Others responded there's nothing heroic about fights where nothing is really at risk. (The response was a little more complicated than that, but it's not really relevant here.) The counter-response: the risk in an RPG has nothing to do with heroism; what's heroic about rolling up a new character every half hour? Or other retorts about the degree of risk required to qualify for heroism.

Look closely: are these people talking about a game? No, they're talking about heroism, an aesthetic/moral quality, and whether the game allows the expression or experience of that quality. Frankly, this is an intractable question--at least as intractable as asking whether Harrison Ford or Joe Montana is a greater hero. Both are "heroic" only within fictional contexts which depend on the observer's conception of heroism. (Yes, people really do play football, but it's an artificial situation.) Discussion at this level is an argument over value judgments.

On the other hand we can talk about more tractable issues like "challenge" and then agree to disagree whether "challenge" is required for heroism or any other value (including "fun") that we seek in a game. I've done a bit of that in the Killer GM thread; droog has enumerated the values that are (in his opinion) supported by removing random death and toning down the risk in games. We may disagree whether doing so actually accomplishes those aesthetic effects, but I don't think it's very hard to agree whether or not a game has "random death".

In short: Pick your values. Relate them to practices, and then refine your practices. But don't confuse the practice ("removing death as an option") with the value; it's the value that gives meaning to the practice.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine... It is my contention that Foucault does the former in showing how the self is constituted as a historical object through an ongoing discourse, and Habermas shows the latter in Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (especially) by demonstrating how aesthetic judgements can play a universalizable, moral role within a historical speech community...

Assuming that all that is correct (and leaving aside the fact that Habermas himself, at any rate, happens to think that aesthetic judgements are distinct from moral ones, and identifies his own approach as a 'Kantian' one), the fact remains that in everyday discourse in the English language, a distinction is made between aesthetic judgements and moral ones.

Endeavouring to undermine that distinction might be a legitimate philosophical project (one that I happen to think is an unpromising one, but whatever).  But a forum devoted to discussing RPGs is probably not the place to try to bring about such a significant revision in English discourse.  Instead, all it is likely to do (aside from giving you an opportunity to propound your views about Foucault and Habermas) is generate confusion.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine...  The dismissal of "post-modern" philosophy by analytic philosophers tends to be the silliest sort of parochialism, nothing more.

I'll remain happily 'parochial', then, if that means that I'm saved from having to read turgid, jargon-riddled, but ultimately vacuous articles about 'transgressing boundaries', 'de-centring the subject', etc.  
:cool:

Quote from: AkrasiaI’ll remain happily ‘parochial’, then, if that means that I’m saved from having to read turgid, jargon-riddled, but ultimately vacuous articles about ‘transgressing boundaries’, ‘de-centring the subject’, etc.  
:cool:

*cough*Sokal Hoax*cough*

Quote from: AkrasiaAssuming that all that is correct (and leaving aside the fact that Habermas himself, at any rate, happens to think that aesthetic judgements are distinct from moral ones, and identifies his own approach as a 'Kantian' one),

Dude, you should have just fessed up you hadn't read him in the first place. It's no shame - I've read shockingly little Hegel, and have never touched Evans or Kripke. People have specialties for a reason.

Regarding Habermas' positions, we should look at his actual philosophical approach as carried out through his work, rather than his off-handed commentary on it. Once again, we have to read him critically, rather than taking everything he says at face-value. He has written a big book showing how art and literary criticism contributed to a change in public life that was political and moral in character. I think Habermas is simply being inconsistent when he says that he believes in such a divide, and I think there are good reasons to favour the earlier position (the position of Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) over the latter one (this whole Kantian checklist thing).

Quotethe fact remains that in everyday discourse in the English language, a distinction is made between aesthetic judgements and moral ones.

Sure. The distinction is also regularly ignored or depreciated in everyday discourse. We even use the same term: "good" to refer to both a good work of art ("That movie was good") and moral behaviour ("He's a good guy"). The meaning of both uses might not be identical in all cases, but I think that synonymy shows that it's hardly some strange idea outside our ordinary way of talking.

Here's a well-known recent example of moral and aesthetic concerns being treating as mutually-dependent, rather than distinct: Roger Ebert's review of Fight Club. In that review, Ebert is making a moral condemnation of the movie, and that moral condemnation is his justification for why it is not a good movie aesthetically. Unless Roger Ebert is not writing in an ordinary way in that article, you can't throw down the "Everyday discourse supports me!" card.

QuoteEndeavouring to undermine that distinction might be a legitimate philosophical project (one that I happen to think is an unpromising one, but whatever).  But a forum devoted to discussing RPGs is probably not the place to try to bring about such a significant revision in English discourse.  Instead, all it is likely to do (aside from giving you an opportunity to propound your views about Foucault and Habermas) is generate confusion.

It takes two to talk. Don't be childish and act like I held you down and forced you to type words into the computer.

My original point, way back when, was that Settembrini was right that our gaming is shaped by our moral values, but wrong in every other detail. He is wrong that our "playstyles" determine our moral character, such that people who play "wrong" are immoral or something. The rest of his point was rather incoherent. By saying that that gaming had no moral component, because it was an aesthetic matter, I think you were wrong too.

QuoteI'll remain happily 'parochial', then, if that means that I'm saved from having to read turgid, jargon-riddled, but ultimately vacuous articles about 'transgressing boundaries', 'de-centring the subject', etc.  
:cool:

Once again, haven't you been arguing for the value of Kant? It's just plain old hypocrisy to decry an unfamiliar jargon as especially difficult while arguing for the value of a familiar one. Not every essay or book published by a "post-modern" philosopher is a work of genius, but then, there's a lot of laughable crap in analytic philosophy too. Papers on how the "arch" use of indexicals is unaccounted for by Russell's theory of reference, or how our personhood is maintained by the existence of a tiny enduring particle are just as ridiculous.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWhen I teach Heidegger, I give the kids a spiel on "Vom Ereignis": should that be "Of the Event" or "From Enowning"? The latter is beyond groan, but hey, it's accurate.

They translate it as both, but the default for "Ereignis" is "Event" unless they think Heidegger is emphasising the "En-owning" aspect for a philogical-philosophical reason. Generally, they put the German word next to it in brackets just so there's no confusion.

Quote from: John Morrow*cough*Sokal Hoax*cough*

The Sokal hoax is a nice talking point, but it doesn't prove much other than a single journal was willing to relax its standards of peer-review for a contributor on a specialty subject. It's hardly a ringing indictment of nearly a hundred years of philosophical work by hundreds of people on numerous subjects using a huge variety of theoretical approaches.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineThe Sokal hoax is a nice talking point, but it doesn't prove much other than a single journal was willing to relax its standards of peer-review for a contributor on a specialty subject.

The problem wasn't that it was accepted for publication.  The problem was that using the language of post-modern philosophy, nobody could tell that it was nonsense or couldn't bear to slog through the thing to figure that out.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's hardly a ringing indictment of nearly a hundred years of philosophical work by hundreds of people on numerous subjects using a huge variety of theoretical approaches.

No, but it's an excellent indictment of the language being used in certain circles to discuss philosophy.  Understanding what someone is saying is a fairly basic requirement for communication.  Writing the literary equivalent of Rorschach Tests doesn't explain and clarify ideas.

Quote from: Elliot WilenMaybe I'm misunderstanding things but it seems to me that this thread isn't really served by a discussion of whether morals are distinct from aesthetics.[...]

Look closely: are these people talking about a game? No, they're talking about heroism, an aesthetic/moral quality, and whether the game allows the expression or experience of that quality. Frankly, this is an intractable question--at least as intractable as asking whether Harrison Ford or Joe Montana is a greater hero. Both are "heroic" only within fictional contexts which depend on the observer's conception of heroism. [...]

I think you've caught it well, Elliot. I've often found that different ideas of what a "hero" is leads to different kinds of game sessions. There are certainly cultural differences in the ideas of "heroism", but there are many individual differences, too. Since roleplaying games are so often about "heroes", what the individual people at the game table think a "hero" is, is very important.

For example, as Robin Laws pointed out in his book about GMing, a common American idea of the hero is one who has extraordinary ability and does extraordinary things (see for example the recent tv series, "Heroes", where people wake up with super-powers). The British idea of "hero", by comparison, is the ordinary person who in an extreme situation does extraordinary things. So if you're playing with someone with an American idea of hero, you might want a game where they can have a high-level character - succeeding by virtue of their great abilities. If you're playing with someone with a British idea of hero, you might want a game where they can spend Hero Points to get successes - this one time, the ordinary person does something extraordinary.

I think this idea of "hero" lies at the heart of a lot of arguments about fudging dice rolls, munchkinism, level-based systems vs skill-based, and so on.

Americans also view ordinary people who do extraordinary things as heroes, just not superheroes. All the CSI variants and other do-gooder style shows show that. There's definitely a large focus on superhero stuff right now though, because it's a big moneymaker. The people that grew up on the "newer" comics are coming into their own on both sides of the movie screen, so we see people with the desire to make good superhero movies and others with the childhood dreams and adult wallets who'll pay to see them.

Unfortunately lots of Americans also view sports figures as heroes, regardless of their moral fiber or activities outside the arena.

Quote from: James McMurrayUnfortunately lots of Americans also view sports figures as heroes, regardless of their moral fiber or activities outside the arena.

For a lot of Americans, being a hero is about having power, not about acting in the service of a greater cause.

A discussion of how "hero points" vs. "high-level characters" communicate a sense of "heroism" in different ways would be valuable, I think, even if we began by admitting that both are "artificial" heroism when viewed from another perspective (about which more in a minute). You could even relate this to the fudging thread here, or to critiques of mook rules as in this review of Adventure!. (Note the latter is discussed further in excruciating detail in Jeff's gameblog.)

In a nutshell, symbolically, using high-level characters against mooks as a way of representing the heroism in a fictional context arguably does have a whiff of the übermensch in it...while the act of spending a hero point can have the symbolic effect of telling the participants that "my character isn't extraordinary in the game-world, but I'm going to bless his heroic behavior with this point, which openly acknowledges that the story of his success is a product of my desires as a real-world person manipulating a game."

[Ugh. Please note I'm not calling people fascists for liking one game or another. At least, I enjoy swashbuckling fantasy and Bondian action, both of which have a strong implication of the heroes being wildly more competent than regular joes, such that they laugh in the face danger, actually get off on it a bit. If that makes me a blackshirt, well...]

But I really wanted to go beyond that and say that "heroism" is itself a bit of a red herring. That's why I pointed to sports. The real or vicarious thrill we get from sports is similar to but different from the thrill of reading a piece of good adventure fiction. If one person says they enjoy the heroism of Indiana Jones and another poo-poos that as fake, suggesting Pelé as a "real hero", isn't the conversation really over in terms of agreeing on further examples of heroism? Obviously there are different values being ascribed to the same word. What it comes down to is something like appreciating accounts of striving and overcoming obstacles, vs. directly or vicariously struggling and testing oneself. The "sporting" or "game" aesthetic even if embedded in a fantasy world requires actual risk or challenge to find meaning; the "dramatic" aesthetic on the other hand is interested in, well, dramatic values and deliberately filters out risks that might lead to undramatic results. E.g., when there's a blowout in football (the American kind), it's bad for the networks because people turn off their TV sets. But the game would suffer more if the rules were rigged to guarantee an interesting fourth quarter--why bother playing, let alone watching, the first 45 minutes of the game?

So "challenge" and "drama" are values that different people weigh differently (sometimes to exclusion of other values) in their roleplaying activities. Unfortunately a lot of "playstyle" arguments are based on fundamental value differences, yet people often proceed as if everyone was working from the same set of values. The result is a bit like having the film critic review last night's Monday Night Football game in terms of character and plot development, and the sports reporter spending an entire column on analyzing the tactics of the gunfights in Unforgiven.

EDIT: I think one of the attractions of today's "reality shows" is that they provide both the uncontrolled, unscripted quality of sports--not exactly "challenge", but a hunger for risk and a weariness of traditional narrative--along with the human qualities that we crave in traditional drama. Sports go for that in their "human interest" pieces about this player or that during a big game, but they usually come off as corny. (I can hear the cadence of Bob Costas's voice as I type this.)

Quote from: John MorrowFor a lot of Americans, being a hero is about having power, not about acting in the service of a greater cause.

Unfortunately true. We've been taught that fame and fortune are the holy grail, so those who attain it must be worthy of our praise.

Quote from: John MorrowNo, but it's an excellent indictment of the language being used in certain circles to discuss philosophy.  Understanding what someone is saying is a fairly basic requirement for communication.  Writing the literary equivalent of Rorschach Tests doesn't explain and clarify ideas.

This is imprecise. Sokal's essay was about dovetailing two kinds of knowledge: poststructuralist philosophy and advanced physics. The way he used bits and pieces from the former was convoluted, wordy and redundant, but not nonsensical. That is why he got the essay published at all, see. What was nonsensical was the way in which he then "demonstrated" parallels to it in physics.

This means two things. One, he did not prove that poststructuralist philosophy is gibberish. Two, he did prove that Social Text, or any other journal, should not publish articles that extend into fields beyond its core competence.

And that points to the real tragedy. Thanks to Sokal, the distrust between the humanities and the sciences in the US is now at a peak. Precisely what one would want to see--actual dialogue between the most advanced thinkers in the disciplines--has been rendered almost impossible. Because for that to happen, you need to trust those strangers you're talking to.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineDude, you should have just fessed up you hadn't read him in the first place.

Dude, time to recognise that people who have read Habermas might not agree with your take on his work.  (For what it is worth, I have not only read Habermas, but my MPhil thesis at Oxford was partially on Habermas's 'discourse ethics'.  A thesis that was recognised as 'the best in political theory' the year that it was examined, by G.A. Cohen, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College.  Sure that was well over 10 years ago, and I've since not been focused on Habermas's stuff, but your claim that I haven't read him or thought critically about his views is completely false.)

Quote from: PseudoephedrineRegarding Habermas' positions, we should look at his actual philosophical approach as carried out through his work ...

You mean like Justification and Application, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, and Between Facts and Norms?  Sorry to disappoint you, but having looked at 'his actual philosophical approach' in those works, I find your own spin on his views implausible.

Look, you like his very early work rather than his most recent stuff.  Fine, good for you.  But that doesn't mean that someone who has read his more recent stuff, and understands him to be advancing a broadly Kantian moral and political philosophy, hasn't 'critically engaged' with his work.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt takes two to talk. Don't be childish and act like I held you down and forced you to type words into the computer. ...

:confused:

Quote from: PseudoephedrineOnce again, haven't you been arguing for the value of Kant? It's just plain old hypocrisy to decry an unfamiliar jargon as especially difficult while arguing for the value of a familiar one...

It's not simply the jargon that irritates me about the 'post-modern theory' that I've read.  It's the combination of jargon with vacuous, incoherent, and/or trivial content that irritates me.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineSure. The distinction is also regularly ignored or depreciated in everyday discourse. We even use the same term: "good" to refer to both a good work of art ("That movie was good") and moral behaviour ("He's a good guy"). The meaning of both uses might not be identical in all cases, but I think that synonymy shows that it's hardly some strange idea outside our ordinary way of talking.

It is certainly possible to 'morally' criticise a work of art that displays immoral behaviour in a favourable light (e.g. Nazis or sociopaths as heroes), or that you think will encourage immoral behaviour in others, or that conveys an overall 'immoral' message (e.g. hurting others is acceptable).  But such facts hardly undermine the underlying distinction between moral claims and aesthetic ones.  

Typically (though not universally) moral claims in everyday English discourse concern obligations on persons (directives that have a kind of 'binding authority' on them), e.g., the claim that it is wrong to break a promise (irrespective of one's wishes).  Moral claims can also describe actions or traits that are praiseworthy, though not strictly speaking obligatory (e.g. 'he is a benevolent person', or 'it would be good of you to help him in his financial difficulties').  The former kinds of moral claims appear to be clearly distinct from aesthetic ones, as it is hard to make sense of 'binding obligations' on persons to evaluate or appreciate works of arts (or other things) in certain ways.  The latter kind of moral claims might be analogous to aesthetic judgements (e.g. 'he is a virtuous man' resembles 'he is stylish chap', in that both involve a kind of 'appraisal respect' for someone without any notion of obligation involved), and many virtue ethicists make a great deal of this similarity.  But nonetheless, I think that it is clear that, in everyday English discourse at least, morally praising someone has a very different meaning for most speakers than aesthetically praising someone.  (Of course, particular judgements can combine elements of both.)

In any case, it's not surprising that many posters earlier in this thread were confused by  Sett's use of the term 'moral', as it did not appear to fit with everyday English usage of the term.  That was my rather modest point.