PHIL 14N: Why Games Matter: The Philosophy of Play
General Education Requirements
Not currently certified for a requirement. Courses are typically considered for Ways certification a quarter in advance.
Course Description
Are games genuinely valuable uses of our limited time on this mortal coil? Are they, as Bernard Suits suggests, the only intrinsically valuable pursuit? Or are they merely ways to temporarily escape a harsher reality? Are they training exercises for success in real life? And if they don’t matter, why are we so drawn to them? According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15-24-year-olds spend an average of 90 mins/day playing video games. That’s a lot of time!
We want to give this important class of human activities the philosophical attention it deserves. We’ll examine some central questions in the philosophy of games such as: Why play games? What even is a game? Is there anything that all games have in common? Wittgenstein famously claimed that this is a question with no good answer – we’ll see if we can do better!
In addition, we’ll look at some broader philosophical issues that can be illuminated by thinking about games. These include: What makes something valuable? What are the origins of communication? How do our ethical frameworks translate to virtual worlds?
Here are some examples of what we might investigate in a class session:
- Are there right and wrong ways to play a game? Are speedrunners playing games wrong? Are cheaters? What about those who take Pictionary deadly seriously?
- Play Hanabi to examine the nature of communication.
- Because playing games involves willing certain outcomes, are there ethical considerations that apply especially to gaming? Does a genocide run in Undertale reflect poorly on one’s moral character?
- What makes some games fun and others a chore to play? What makes games aesthetically valuable? Does a game have to be fun to be valuable?
Meet the Instructors: Rosa Cao & Joshua O'Rourke
Rosa Cao

“I love playing games, but also often find myself feeling guilty about it. I often want to do one thing, but would prefer to want to do something else. Trying to come to terms with these kinds of intrapersonal conflicts is one of the reasons I ended up studying neuroscience in grad school – I thought the science of the brain would help me understand how our minds work. Why does it seem like sometimes my motivations control me, instead of the other way around? The connection between our experiences as creatures with minds and neuroscience turned out to be more complicated than I had hoped, and so I found myself drawn to philosophy, which studies how things hang together in the broadest way. Now I spend my time thinking about explanation, representation, and why my brain isn’t more cooperative when I tell it to do things.”
Joshua O'Rourke

“My name is Josh O’Rourke, and I’m a lecturer in the Philosophy Department here at Stanford. My specialty is in the philosophy of mind, where I focus on consciousness and related issues surrounding perception and mental representation. I also have interests in metaphysics and philosophy of mathematics. My interest in philosophy of games is relatively new, but it springs from a love of playing games of all kinds. From tabletop Dungeons and Dragons to Baldur’s Gate 3, from crossword puzzles to Civilization 6, from Magic the Gathering to ultimate frisbee, playing games has always been an important part of my life, and, as a philosopher, I can’t help but feel deep puzzlement about them. I’m particularly interested in the question of what makes games valuable. Are they just a diversion, or is there something more there?”