[In-person] Curiosity Café: Games (Tickets on Eventbrite)

Nearly everyone has played a game. But what, exactly, is a game? After all, the category appears to encompass a wide variety of (not always human) activities, from board games to video games to the Olympic games. Games can be solitary, cooperative, or competitive, and depend in varying degrees on chance or skill; they include activities as different as Street Fighter and Solitaire, Monopoly and basketball, beer pong and fetch. To make matters more complicated, we often use the word “game” to describe attitudes toward things we do not usually perceive as games — as when we accuse people of treating an important task or a relationship “like a game” or we play games with other people’s (or each other’s…) emotions.

What, then, does it mean for something to be — or for someone to play — a game? At our next Curiosity Café, moderated by Sophia Whicher and Adrian Ma, we will engage in a playful, but by no means frivolous, exploration of these and other questions about the nature and value of games, including:

• What makes something a game? Is there a feature that is common to everything we call a “game”? (For example: must all games have rules?)
• What does it mean to play, or to treat something like, a game?
• What can games tell us about the importance of play in our lives?
• Are games always amusing or unserious?
• What is the value, if any, of playing games?
• When is it good to treat something like a game? When is it bad?
• Why is cheating in a game often seen as a big deal?
• Can we imagine a world without games? What would that look like?

Don’t play games with our expectations — reserve your spot by purchasing a ticket on Eventbrite now! ;)

Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café here (link) to attend this event. You need a ticket to be admitted. See the above link for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Hope to see you there!

(Also check out the next Curiosity Class "The Experience of Grief" on Saturday July 5th and our next Philosophical Skills Workshop "How to Evaluate an Argument" on Saturday June 21)

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This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.