Quote"Disagreements that seem to be solely about aesthetic matters, like which game is more fun or better designed, turn out to also be moral arguments about how you think people should play,"

That´s more what I was aiming at.

Quoteskating coaches, please shut up, we're trying to put together a baseball team here. And you know, once you achieve that focus, you can now have some very interesting and useful discussions about pitching vs. hitting, whether to sacrifice or steal, who is the better outfielder, and so forth.

This I also endorse.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine...
I'm unfamiliar with MCCA, but Between Facts and Norms, and J&A both deal with discourse ethics, not with the legitimacy of the distinction between aesthetics and morals.
...
I'm curious as to what exactly your grounds are for finding my position implausible then?

Well a fundamental part of 'discourse ethics' involves its distinction between 'moral claims' and other value claims (including 'aesthetic' ones).  It's a core feature of his normative theory.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine...
 ... I said that it was necessary to read Habermas critically, because he departed from Kant on a number of issues, including the very one under debate.

Not in his later work.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine...
It is entirely possible to be a good Kantian and still take much from Habermas. It is also possible not to be a Kantian and take much from Habermas. You seem to be claiming that the latter is impossible without good grounds to do so.

I didn't intend to claim that (or rather, I don't really care about it).  Rather, I simply objected to your claim that since I had a different take on Habermas's philosophy that I obviously had not actually read his stuff.  

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine...
Once again, I fail to see how this is substantially different than much of what goes in Anglo-American philosophy. I presented two real examples of trivial, silly work that was published, one of them even by a reasonably well-known philosopher (Roderick Chisholm). The criticism you've levelled against "post-modernism" applies to other types of philosophy just as readily (Scholastic mediaeval philosophy, analytic philosophy, German idealism) if one is unfamiliar with them. It's a non-criticism: "This is just meaningless piffle! I don't need to understand it."

Hey, if it makes you happy, I'll readily concede that a lot of analytical philosophy is filled with dense jargon, etc.  
:shrug:
The difference is that, in my experience at least, there is some pay-off after struggling through a piece of analytical philosophy (at least in the subjects in which I'm interested).  In contrast, I've rarely had that experience after reading anything considered 'post-modern' in approach.  Perhaps there's some golden stuff out there full of insights produced by quasi-Nietzschean, neo-Schmittian cultural theorists, but life is too short for me to go through the effort of sifting through the garbage to find out.  (By way of reference, I have read some stuff by folks like Foucault, Deleuze, Mouffe, Judith Butler, Wendy Brown, William Connolly, and others.  It's been many years, though, so perhaps I missed something.  During that same time, however, I found other stuff far more promising, and not just in Anglophone analytical philosophy.  In any case, there's no way that I'm going back now to find out ... it simply wouldn't be practical even if I had the desire, which I don't.)

Elliot> Well, that makes sense, except for the part where it's presented as giving rise to insoluble arguments. Just because it has to do with different ethical and aesthetic interests doesn't mean that these kinds of discussions are doomed to bitter arguments that go nowhere. If discussion is resulting in that kind of thing, then the discussion itself it at fault, not its character as an ethical-aesthetic dispute. Nor do we just need to retreat into humour, which was the other thing Sett proposed. There's a third way, a consensus-creating kind of discussion, that involves rational public evaluation of claims without name-calling or fart-jokes taking over. Sett should investigate that instead.

Quote from: CalithenaHi Akrasia,

I'm not a big fan of discourse ethics, but I think Knowledge and Human Interests is a really interesting book, and probably under-read today for a variety of reasons. If you've written at all on Habermas' earlier stuff I'd love to check it out; drop me a PM or email if something comes to mind.

I don't actually think much about Habermas these days (not for many years now), and I certainly haven't written anything on him that I'm not embarassed about now.  

Anyhow, welcome to the forum!  Good to see you here, you crazy dreamer. :cool:

QuoteThere's a third way, a consensus-creating kind of discussion

Like yours with Akrasia...:rolleyes:

In values, there´s no consensus. They wouldn´t be values then.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen... And by the way: Philosophers, please take it to the off-topic forum. Or at least, if you're going to persist in hijacking this thread, please try not to do so in future threads.

Fair enough.  Unless provoked beyond reason, or drunk, I will refrain from pursuing the debate further in this thread.

Quote from: AkrasiaFair enough.  Unless provoked beyond reason, or drunk, I will refrain from pursuing the debate further in this thread.

Yeah, shall we call a truce for now?

Quote from: PseudoephedrineYeah, shall we call a truce for now?

That would seem to be the morally right thing to do.

It's the aesthetically pleasing choice, at any rate.

Not what I'd call an Ereignis, exactly.

Pseudoephedrine,

Unfortunately, I agree with Sett. If I only like bananas and you only like apples, then we're never going to agree on what makes a good fruit in the abstract. If I ask you for banana advice probably the best you can do is refer me to the opinions of other banana-lovers.

It's interesting that boardgamegeek has endeavored to do exactly this, in a semi-scientific fashion, by using a "profile" of games you like, as  way of helping you find people with similar tastes who can refer you to other games you might like. However with RPGs the social element looms so large that I doubt you could do that easily using game titles--some kind of questionnaire would be needed; it'd be tricky to phrase questions so they don't embody the very ambiguities that've already caused trouble. ("Do you enjoy immmersing in your character?" is pretty useless for example.)

Another factor at play here is whether the variety of aesthetic frameworks which separate different gamers has the nature of strict categories, or if it's more fluid, like the "genres" that Brand Robins has talked about in his livejournal. If the former, an ultimate solution would be to break RPGing into separate hobbies...but if the latter, we're going to keep having problems as the fundamental criteria for "enjoyable roleplaying" could vary continuously, leading to "slippery slope" arguments.

Quote from: CalithenaIt's the aesthetically pleasing choice, at any rate.

Thanks.

Quote from: CalithenaOh, OK. I think Chisolm's mereological essentialism can be motivated reasonably well for physical objects - even from physics-talk - it's arguable that the reason physicists [SNIP]

What the FUCK?

Is this kind of praxis of contemporaneous roleplaying dialectic some kind of categorical imperative for you?

mereological essentialism? Mate, here's a mereological essentialism conundrum for you: if Calithena speaks in a way that everyone can understand him, if he loses his obscurity, is he still Calithena?

:forge:

English, motherfucker. Do you speak it?

Quote from: JimBobOzWhat the FUCK?

Is this kind of praxis of contemporaneous roleplaying dialectic some kind of categorical imperative for you?

mereological essentialism? Mate, here's a mereological essentialism conundrum for you: if Calithena speaks in a way that everyone can understand him, if he loses his obscurity, is he still Calithena?

:forge:

English, motherfucker. Do you speak it?

And the balance is restored

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIf he means, "Disagreements that seem to be solely about aesthetic matters, like which game is more fun or better designed, turn out to also be moral arguments about how you think people should play," then he's right, but badly stating it.

There are other options that just jumping in and shouting "Fuck your mother, and D&D to boot!"

Exactly.

IMO I think the term values is more appropriate. Every gaming group is compromised of individuals who have different values when it comes to rpgs.Yet they compromise and have a functional gaming experience.

Regards,
David R