Wittgenstein and the Grasshopper

I didn't want to waste any time on this topic, but it has been popping up in the blogosphere here and there, and in the words of Popeye, "I've had all I can stand, I can't stands no more!"

In 1978 a philosopher named Bernard Suits wrote a book titled The Grasshopper: Games Life and Utopia. In that book, Suits gives a definition of 'game.' From his only mention of Wittgenstein, it is apparant that Suits takes his definition to be a refutation of Wittgenstein's statement that "if you look at [the proceedings that we call 'games'] you will not see something that is common to all...." (PI, §66) Concerning Wittgenstein's advice to "look and see whether there is anything common to all," Suits replies, "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." (The Grasshopper, p.21)

In a recent interview, Tom Hurka, philosopher at the University of Toronto, and author of the introduction for the recent reprint of The Grasshopper, is more explicit:

I think Suits's definition decisively refutes Wittgenstein's claims, and it does so because it looks at a level Wittgenstein didn't consider. He saw the surface differences between games—that some use playing-cards and some don't, that some are amusing and some not—and concluded that there can't be anything they have in common. But Suits's analysis operates at a deeper level, finding a shared structural feature that's consistent with all these surface differences, one that involves the pursuit of a certain type of goal, restrictions on the permitted means to that goal, and an attitude that accepts those restrictions because they make activity governed by them possible. That structural feature can be found in card games, cricket, chess, rock-paper-scissors—any game you like. But Wittgenstein didn't see it because he was looking only at the surface.

And on the back of The Grasshopper's cover, Simon Blackburn writes that Suits “engages not only Wittgenstein but human life itself at the highest level, in a book that challenges philosophical orthodoxies, while all the time flowing like honey.”

These are fantastic claims. Wittgenstein's fleeting, shallow look at the meanings of words (in this case, 'game') has been engaged and decisively refuted by a little-known philosopher masquerading as a grasshopper. Fortunately for Wittgenstein, the claims are ridiculous (that is, worthy of ridicule).

Reading all of this, I can only wonder with Duck whether the Philosophical Investigations is taught in school anymore. For (as he comments, and I'll elaborate below) the claims by Hurka and Blackburn indicate a lack of familiarity with (or understanding of) the relevant sections of the Investigations.

Now, I have no intention of reading The Grasshopper (I don't have any interest in the definition of 'game'). But (just for this post) I did read Hurka's "Games and the Good" in which he summarizes and applies Suits's definition of 'game' (Hurka wants to use Suits's definition to argue that excellence in games is good). In the opening pages, Hurka repeats the claim that Suits refutes Wittgenstein:

A unified explanation of why excellence in games is good requires a unified account of what games are, and many doubt that this is possible. After all, Wittgenstein famously gave the concept of a game as his primary example of one for which necessary and sufficient conditions cannot be given but whose instances are linked only by looser "family resemblances." If Wittgenstein was right about this, there can be no single explanation of why skill in games is good, just a series of distinct explanations of the value of skill in hockey, skill in chess, and so on.

But Wittgenstein was not right, as is shown in a little-known book that is nonetheless a classic of twentieth-century philosophy, Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Suits gives a perfectly persuasive analysis of playing a game as, to quote his summary statement, "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." (pp. 1-2)

Then, after a summary of Suits's definition, Hurka makes the following admission:

This analysis will doubtless meet with objections, in the form of attempted counterexamples. But Suits considers a whole series of these in his book, showing repeatedly that his analysis handles them correctly, and not by some ad hoc addition but once its elements are properly understood. Nor would it matter terribly if there were a few counterexamples. Some minor lack of fit between his analysis and the English use of "game" would not be important if the analysis picks out a phenomenon that is unified, close to what is meant by "game," and philosophically interesting. (p. 4)

I will not discuss Suits's definition (as summarized by Hurka), or give counter-examples (of which there are many). Hurka's remark that "a few counterexamples" would not "matter terribly" is a tacit admission that there are such examples. But he dismisses them because "some minor lack of fit between his analysis and the English use of 'game' would not be important if the analysis picks out a phenomenon that is unified, close to what is meant by 'game,' and philosophically interesting." What Hurka doesn't realize is that this last sentence concedes Wittgenstein's point!

Here are the relevant sections of the Investigations:

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 and see 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! […]

68. […] 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".)
[…]

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 boundary—for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! (Except for that special purpose.) [...]

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.

76. If someone were to draw a sharp boundary I could not acknowledge it as the one that I too always wanted to draw, or had drawn in my mind. For I did not want to draw one at all. His concept can then be said to be not the same as mine, but akin to it. The kinship is that of two pictures, one of which consists of colour patches with vague contours, and the other of patches similarly shaped and distributed, but with clear contours. The kinship is just as undeniable as the difference.

Notice that, while no sharp boundary can be drawn to the proceedings that we (i.e., English speakers) call 'games,' a sharp boundary can be drawn for a special purpose. However, the concept that is delineated by the sharp boundary is not the same as the normal concept, but akin to it. The concept that Suits creates by drawing a sharp boundary is similar to (but also different than) our concept of a game. And while the novel concept can, no doubt, be used for some purpose that is "philosophically interesting," it hardly shows that the normal concept admits of an exact definition.

So please, enough of this silliness about Suits refuting Wittgenstein.

[Update: Simon Blackburn has responded here.]

[Update: Norman Geras of normblog has given a nice response to Suits's argrument.]