On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 18:55:02 -0700 (PDT), Immortalist
yahoo.com> wrote:
[..]>If A role-playing game is a game in which the participants
Note the plural term "participants". Role-playing games
involve collaborating participants, not a single role-playing
participant among a group of non-participants.
>assume the roles of fictional characters and collaboratively
>create or follow stories and participants determine the actions
>of their characters based on their characterization,
Note the term "collaborate". There's no collaboration
between the borg's character and the news group
participants here, just the borg's insistence and oft-stated
*belief* that his character is real despite the news group
participant's objections that it cannot be real.
>and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system
>of rules and guidelines
There's no "formal system of rules and guidelines" being put
forward here collaboratively by the borg and this news
group's participants, just the borg's insistence and oft-stated
*belief* that his character is real without any collaboration.
[..]
>I often play Immanual Kant but soon I will be David Hume
>and to me this is the same thing as the person playing the
>totalitarian Borg role
Do you insist that you *believe* you're Kant when playing
Kant? Do you ever insist that you *believe* you're Hume
when playing Hume? No, you don't, so there's nothing to
be gained here by trying to imply that your "role-playing"
is the same as the borg's. Unlike you when arguing from
Kant's point of view, for example, the borg claims that he
actually *believes* he is the borg, and this element of his
oft-stated *belief* here is crucial.
[Why does the fact that I made the statement implicate
that I believe it? All conversational implicature is based
on certain rules (or "maxims", as the philosopher Paul
Grice called them) which govern cooperative
communication. One of these rules is that you should
state only what you believe (which Grice called a maxim
of "Quality"). Thus, from the fact that I state something,
you can conclude that I believe it. Of course, I might be
lying, but conversational implicature is based upon the
presumption that people are trying to cooperate, and
thus are obeying the rules.]
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/
