Been a long time since I posted here! I've been doing a bit of philosophy - mainly epistemology, though I've gone a small way into ethics and other categories - when today I suddenly had a rather whimsical thought: what if I tried (and most probably fail miserably) to apply philosophy to Role-playing?
Lets just be clear here: we're talking about the thing involving 'confusing stuff that quite a few dead people discussed before their deaths', as one of my friends attempted to put it in a humorous way.
Alright, the 'is this reality/real life?' question first comes to mind. Normally, we'd say that this is fake, that Mizahar doesn't truly exist (physical existence 'somewhere'?), but upon thinking deeper, what if Mizahar is real? What if we are creations of the Gods of Mizahar, but we perceive ourselves as creating all this? Sounds ludicrous, but in certain religions God/Gods are viewed to be all-powerful - or powerful enough to do something like this. This is quite farfetched, as conjectures go.
So how do we know that this is true/false?
I'll leave you to think about it - this would be getting into the realm of knowledge and how do we obtain it, and there's simply too much for me to read, remember and formulate my own responses and craft my own theories.
Bah, I lost my train of thought. I'll try seeing it in a different manner.
The philosophy of science discusses falsifiability of a scientific theory. Basically, if some observation is true and would prove the theory to be false, then the theory is falsifiable. As opposed to non-falsifiable theories. Take Carl Sagan's 'Invisible dragon in my garage' for example. In Mizahar's development - lore, characters, etc. - the STs work pretty damn hard to help out and correct mistakes. So we could potentially conceive of them as attempting to find that particular observation/s X to falsify, to make false, that bit of development - if it doesn't cohere with the rules, 'mechanics' (if you will) as is defined by the moderators, it isn't accepted, and such areas would be mentioned and be fixed if possible. But this isn't really about falsifiability, come to think of it. It's about making sure that whatever you're trying to develop coherent with the existing stuff. You can't have a PC, a champion of Rhysol, serving the Windoak. You can't have a Kelvic mate with a Pycon to produce a mixed-blood.
And this brings me to the issue of confirmation bias, something I'm guilty of. Favouring things will confirm what I'm supporting, and pretty much ignoring anything that goes against it. Instead, I should be trying to find flaws in whatever I try to believe in and what I'm trying to develop in Mizahar, trying to find something - anything! - to 'falsify' it, something that shows that it doesn't cohere with Mizahar.
I hope this makes sense.
School's calling me, so I'll write one more portion.
What school of philosophy would I be leaning towards?
Scepticism. I question almost everything. And this tendency to question everything I perceive or think of doesn't make me seem friendly. When someone says "I love you" to me, I start asking myself in my mind 'What is love?"; and then I have a terrible urge to ask "How do I know that you love me?", "How do you know that you love me?" and others. In arguments, I try to argue my side as far as possible, and I start questioning everything that I see as being against my side - once again, I do something similar to confirmation bias, and argue vehemently. I'd like to think that I've mellowed a bit now, but it needs more work.
And when I say almost everything, I mean it in the literal sense. I see a wedding - out pops the question! "Are both of you in love with each other? How do you two know that?" - although I refrain from doing so as much as possible.
I write something like this - "How do I know that I'm using proper English grammar? How do I know that what I'm saying makes sense to other people?"
It's gone beyond simply being a philosophical Sceptic. I'm constantly doubting so much around me, and as you can probably guess, it isn't helping me much. The only time I don't feel this is when I drown myself in something - Positive or negative.
There's a quote by Nietzsche: "To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." and I don't know if it's true or not. I'm inclined to be optimistic - that life's wonderful - and sometimes it really is, but well...
Well, this has gone on longer than I thought it would. Deviated from my original reason, but it'll have to do. Cheers!