The virtue of error

Solved games and ethical deliberation

Bibliographic Data

ID21603159
AuthorsDavid N McNeill (0000-0003-4934-3082, Deep Springs College Big Pine California USA, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume28
Issue3
Pages639-656
Publication date2020-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0966-8373 • E-ISSN: 1468-0378
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ejop.12595
OpenAlexW3095603348
LanguageEN
References cited30

In this paper, I argue that genuine ethical deliberation, and hence ethical agency, is incompatible in principle with the possession of determinate practical prescriptions concerning how best to act in a concrete ethical situation. I make this argument principally by way of an analogy between gameplay and ethical deliberation. I argue that trivially solved games of perfect information (the example I use is tic‐tac‐toe) are, or become, in some sense unplayable for the individual for whom the game is trivially solved. The reason for this, I suggest, is that there ceases to be space within the game for the distinction between that individual being a better and being a worse player of the game. I then use this example as an occasion to reflect on the kind of epistemic indeterminacy that appears to be a condition of genuine ethical deliberation

Analogy · Deliberation · Epistemology · Political science · Sociology · Virtue · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy

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